


let the gods speak softly of us

by jellyfishheart



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, F/F, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 192,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4810946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishheart/pseuds/jellyfishheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the summer after Sarah hooks up with Beth's boyfriend she finds herself also plagued by Rachel "I'm not here to make friends" Duncan, who's content to spend the full two months pretending she's literally anywhere else. </p><p>or yet another summer camp AU in which Sarah and Rachel hate each other until it gets complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rachel's attitude is great for ANTM but not so much for dealing with kids. Sarah's a mess. also contains Cosima/Delphine, a disillusioned Beth/Paul, and Alison/Beth as well as a suicide attempt that will get a big warning at the start of its chapter.

 

 _The beautiful are found in the edge of a room  
_ _Crumpled into spiders and needles and silence  
_ _And we can never understand why they  
_ _Left, they were so  
_ _Beautiful._

 

* * *

 

 

A year ago today she was standing in this exact spot, watching the buses pull over the hill with a building nausea and her hands jammed into her shorts pockets so no one could see them trembling.  
  
So much of that first day was survival that she almost wants to laugh; it had seemed crucial to keep a wall between her and the rest of the staff, convinced they'd catch one whiff of insecurity or damaged goods and pin her to a tree for the rest of the summer. Now she's half leaning against Cosima, filled not with dread but eye-rolling anticipation, tossing out names and waiting for them to be shot down.  
  
"Quinn Martinez," she offers, lips curling in a smile.  
  
Cosima laughs and shakes her head and beside her Delphine lets out a breath through her nose. "No way," Cosima says. "Sarah, she was a little  _shit_."  
  
"Yeah, but something about her..." Sarah says with a shrug. Cosima snorts. "All I'm saying is I wouldn't mind if she came back."  
  
"You always do gravitate towards the troublemakers," Delphine says.  
  
The first of the buses rumbles to a stop just before a cluster of picnic tables and Sarah shields her eyes to try to spot Quinn through the dusty windows, not really wanting to experience a summer without that little shit-disturber. She'd be eleven now, in Sarah's group; having her on her side would make the prank wars so much more entertaining. (She maybe, secretly, hasn’t checked the list of campers on her clipboard yet just to surprise herself.)  
  
A giant tangle of dark hair comes bouncing off the bus just as Delphine starts to laugh and Sarah lets out a little cheer.  
  
"I really do like her," she says as Quinn spots her and rolls her eyes with an affectionate scowl.  
  
The kids pile up by the picnic tables, their bags bigger than themselves, and the quiet buzz of excitement that had filled the staff as they waited has been amplified to a rush of movement and giddy chatter.  
  
Delphine and Cosima grab their clipboards and take off to the slowing second bus, needing to catch their tiny kids before they get lost in the flow. Sarah has another couple moments of peace before her kids start to find her – the older ones are a little more self-sufficient, able to locate their bags and friends without much help, but they'll be wanting to see their cabin and any new faces soon and Sarah will have to facilitate.  
  
She's a little curious herself to see the newest counselor, some Cambridge bitch Rachel, in action. The girl missed all but the last day of orientation week and somehow managed to get through it without talking to anyone, so all Sarah really knows about her is that she has some kind of stick up her ass and will be working with the ten year olds in the cabin attached to Sarah's.  
  
And she isn't even here – the director wanted to chat with her before the kids arrived, so with Sarah's luck she'll be corralling two unruly groups to their cabins without even a thanks.  
  
"So I'm stuck with you, then?"  
  
Quinn's suddenly standing in front of her expectantly, having dragged with her two of the other eleven year-olds and their overstuffed suitcases.  
  
Sarah smiles and resists the urge to finger-comb Quinn's hair. "Looks like it, you monkey. Hope you like manual labor."  
  
Quinn makes a face and mutters something to the other girl, a new kid Sarah gleans is named Raya from the luggage tag, who looks petrified enough to believe whatever lie Quinn told her.  _She makes us scrub the toilets with our toothbrushes_  or something equally ridiculous, and Sarah would confirm if she didn't see two returning girls looking lost in the middle of the chaos.  
  
"Will you go get Sameera and Ava?" she says to Quinn, who frowns but moves to comply. "I'm gonna round up the rest of the brood then see if we're allowed to go to the cabins yet."  
  
There are a few names on her clipboard she doesn't recognize but the eleven year-olds are, thankfully, usually a couple inches taller than everyone else and more cliquey than Sarah cares to understand. She can already see one of her girls with a group of boys under a tree, their eyes trained on whatever dumb joke their bigheaded counselor is probably telling.  
  
Paul interrupts his performance when Sarah appears, immediately breaking into one of his supposedly charming smiles and moving so Sarah stands in the limelight.  
  
"This is one of the coolest girls you'll ever meet," he introduces to his boys and the one girl who's clinging to someone who must be her twin brother. "If you're lucky she might teach you how to pick a lock or steal food from the mess hall."  
  
"Yeah, or how to spend your summer on latrine duty," she says with a wave of her hand, eager to get out of the sickly cloud of his body spray.  
  
Paul laughs and she shakes off the hand that lands on her arm.  
  
"How's your girlfriend, Paul?" she mutters to him before saying louder, "I think you have one of my girls. What's your name, love?"  
  
The girl straightens up and glances at the boy beside her, who definitely shares her cheekbones and tan skin. "Naomi," she says with more confidence than Sarah expected.  
  
The name's at the bottom of Sarah's clipboard, and she makes a tick beside it before giving Naomi a big smile. "Well you're with me for the summer! Wanna say a quick goodbye to your brother?"  
  
They share another look that Sarah can only chalk up to being twins, ignoring the slight twist it sparks inside her and running a hand through her hair. She hates to be the one to break up siblings.  
  
"Don't worry Nate, we do a  _lot_  of group activities together," Paul says to the brother, putting an arm around Sarah for a brief second before she slips out of it.  
  
"Yeah, unfortunately," she says, under her breath.  
  
She half wishes she'd taken the director up on his offer to switch to the ten year-olds when a spot had become available, much rather wanting to work with Tony, the counselor for the ten year-old boys, than be stuck with Paul for another summer. But somehow her attachment to the shitty right side of the cabin had won out. (And maybe, she won't admit to herself, she needed to keep Paul close enough to make sure he didn't try anything with anyone else.)  
  
Naomi grabs her suitcase and slings a backpack over her shoulder and it's a steely look that could have come from Sarah that she walks away with, joining Sarah as she hightails it away from Paul and back to where her girls have gathered near a picnic table. Quinn seems to be entertaining them with what could only be an inappropriate story and Sarah sighs, getting a pretty good image of how this summer's going to go.  
  
"I'm Sarah, by the way," she says to Naomi, who nods to acknowledge it but doesn't say anything in response.  
  
It isn't the silent treatment, but Sarah understands the need to be alone in your head to ground yourself before whatever's about to happen to you. She spent eight years shuffled around from home to unwelcoming home; maybe it's why the lonely kids always seem to take to her.

 

* * *

 

Cambridge shows up at the last second to round up her ten year olds and barely even glances in Sarah's direction despite them essentially walking together to the cabin, which any other day would have unnerved her but in the wake of Paul feels almost considerate.  
  
Rachel Duncan, Sarah reads over her clipboard. She now knows three things about the walking tundra.  
  
Rachel turns to her once they've all stopped outside the double cabin, her short ashy-blonde hair smooth despite the breeze that's picked up. Sarah's sure her own hair is as messy as Quinn's by now and gives it a quick pat down under Rachel's guise, hoping the girl doesn't think it's for her benefit and squirming a little with the prolonged look she gives her.  
  
"I assume you have rules to go over with your girls," Rachel says as her kids perk up at the accent. Sarah wonders if she's said anything to them at all. "Might as well do it before the chaos of choosing bunks begins, yes?"  
  
It feels like an attempt to suss out how lenient Sarah's going to be with her kids, or to see what exactly goes at this camp. It's becoming clearer now that this is Rachel's first time working in this kind of environment and if there wasn't an almost imperceptible plea in Rachel's eyes then Sarah would milk it for all it's worth.  
  
(Sarah's tactics were a little rougher but with the same intentions last year, and God knows where she'd be if Cosima hadn't taken her under her wing. This might play into it as well but fuck if she's gonna let that slip.)  
  
"Yeah, of course," she says easily, motioning for all the kids to come closer.  
  
Rachel purses her lips together in what might be gratitude and shifts her body so she looks as equally part of this as Sarah.  
  
"Okay, so same as last year for the returning kids; you got the general camp rules in your mail out and we'll probably hear them again at the meeting, but Sarah Rules are as follows: you make a mess you clean it. That goes for stuff and people," Sarah emphasizes, giving Quinn a pointed look. "Any food you snuck in has to be in a sealed container – I am  _not_  dealing with ants this year. If you aren't making friends, you're making enemies."  
  
Rachel catches her eye at this and Sarah's tempted to call her out right now.  
  
"Lastly," she says instead, looking back to the girls, "all feelings are valid. And I'm here for whatever you need. Anything you'd like to add, Rachel?"  
  
The kids all look to Rachel expectantly, and she opens her mouth slightly, put on the spot. "Ah, maybe just an emphasis on personal responsibility?"  
  
Sarah does her best to ignore a snort from Quinn. "Sounds good, I think we're good. Shall we grab our bunks now? Tens on the left, elevens on the right. If you were here last year you know how it goes so-"  
  
She stops as the kids take off into the cabins, knowing the absolute pandemonium that's about to take place will drown out anything she could try to say. Someone's gonna come out in tears in a minute or two but for the time being, she and Rachel are alone.  
  
"So," she says, turning to face Rachel who's frowning at a streak of dirt on her tennis shoes.  
  
"Sarah Manning, yes?" Rachel says without looking up. Sarah makes a noise in confirmation. "I've heard so much about you."  
  
It's almost villainous the way she spits it out, and Sarah shivers.  
  
Of course people would be talking; she's sure it was Alison, the pint-sized future soccer mom who somehow ends up in everyone's business, who made very sure to let Sarah know last year just how despicable it was what she did with Paul. (And Alison's  _affection_  for Paul's girlfriend, Beth, had nothing to do with it, Sarah's sure.) If the rumor mills are spinning Sarah knows that's on the tip of everyone's tongue.  
  
(She likes Beth, the way anyone can like someone they only really know from observing, despite a summer working with her. Almost everyone who knows Beth only knows her from observing; if she wasn't so sad her solitude would be admirable. Still, she can't say she was thinking much about Beth when she let Paul in and she wishes she'd had the balls to apologize. To even acknowledge it.)  
  
"Paul's an arse, just so you know," Sarah says to Rachel to just get it out of the way.  
  
Rachel's eyebrow lifts. "Well I haven't heard about that, but I'm sure I will if that's what you assumed."  
  
Sarah rubs her cheek and sighs. She's about to ask just what Rachel's heard when one of the ten year olds comes out crying, a hairbrush in her hand, barreling straight for Sarah who has to steer her towards Rachel.  
  
"Good luck with that," she says as the kid starts to reach for Rachel's fitted white shirt. "I'd better go see how much blood's been shed in my cabin."  
  
She leaves Rachel with what she can only hope is a smirk the way she feels it falter on her lips and disappears into her cabin before Rachel has time to notice.  
  
"Oh thank God," Quinn says as soon as she's inside. "We've got ourselves a problem."

 

* * *

 

Sarah spies Beth that night at the campfire, as she's herding her girls towards one of the last free logs around the pit and trying to find Rachel to give her a nice glare for taking off without her. She may be new but there is still a way things are run – even the shitty tens counselor last year, Angela, new that.  
  
Beth has her dark hair up in a bun that would look sleek if it weren't for the shadows under her eyes and Sarah understands it to be an act of desperation: just get the hair out of her face as easily as possible, one less grievance to deal with. She's near Alison, which isn't surprising, their two groups an intermingled pile across a log and the sit-upons in front of it. When Alison catches Sarah looking she lifts her chin with menace and Sarah drops her gaze, not wanting to drag all this up again.  
  
The thing with Paul didn't even last long, but it's as if Sarah set out to break Beth's fragile heart with the way Alison's gone on. And truthfully, Sarah still hasn't said, he was the one to instigate it. The one with a girlfriend. The one who definitely should have known better, and who very much deserves at least some of the blame.  
  
But knowing that doesn't alleviate the guilt that sits heavy in Sarah's chest and she can only drop down hard on her log and try not to look in Beth's direction.  
  
_Why are you even still with him_ , she wants to ask.  _You don't love him_.  
  
But maybe she does – Sarah considers that maybe it's Beth's way of trying to ground herself, just as Sarah latched on to a few bad seeds she's come to regret. There's something about being treated shittily when you're not feeling too hot about yourself that makes things feel a little more solid, and Sarah can't fault her for it. She only wishes she hadn't made it worse.  
  
"Aw man, all the good logs are gone," Cosima says essentially at Sarah's ear, scaring the shit out of her.  
  
"Fucking warn a person," Sarah mutters, making sure none of the kids heard. "And yeah, that's what happens when you show up late."  
  
Cosima wiggles her hands in an apologetic gesture, her seven year-olds piling around her like lost puppies and staring curiously at Sarah's older brood. Sarah smiles at an especially tiny girl with long braids who smiles back and hides behind Cosima's leg.  
  
Cosima's not even paying attention, squinting across the fire to presumably spot Delphine.  
  
It didn't exactly surprise Sarah when she heard they were together at the end of last summer but she  _was_  impressed they finally decided to call it something, after eight weeks of sneaking around and pretending the rest of the world didn't exist. Sarah had really gotten comfortable being a third wheel with them.  
  
But they're happy now, still going strong, so Sarah's happy for them. Even when they forget she's around and just take off as one nerdy unit to whatever they've decided to tackle next.  
  
"Aw, no, Delphine saved a spot for me," Cosima says with a grin, absently reaching to pat the head of whatever child's behind her. "Come along, my future scientists and engineers. Peace out, Sarah!"  
  
"Yeah, bye," Sarah says with a snort, waving at all the tiny children as Cosima weaves them around the logs to go join Delphine.  
  
It's only as she's shaking her head and Quinn plops down beside her that she notices her log is directly next to Rachel's, and Rachel sits there with ankles crossed as if not a single part of this is taking place in front of her.  
  
"I hate her," Quinn says, following Sarah's gaze, as she snuggles closer to Sarah's arm.  
  
The kid's probably wiping snot on her to laugh about later, but Sarah appreciates the affection.  
  
"Yeah? Why's that?" Sarah asks.  
  
Rachel can probably hear them, or at least could if she wasn't mentally on some clean vacation, so Sarah doesn't want to outright agree and set the tone for this no doubt excruciatingly long summer.  
  
Quinn lets out a loud sigh and multitasks by sending a nasty look to Daniela, who she's decided is her nemesis for the summer or something. Sarah wasn't really paying attention when she was complaining earlier. They were friends last year so whatever happened in those five minutes of choosing bunks has apparently sparked a war – or a fight that'll fizzle out by tomorrow, Sarah's not sure.  
  
"She's a bitch," Quinn says, whispering the last word.  
  
If it was any other kid Sarah would chuck her upside the head. "Quinn..."  
  
"Well you know she's gonna be mean," Quinn says as if that justifies it. "Worse than Angela. Did she get fired? Ella says she got fired for drugs."  
  
Sarah laughs and pulls Quinn closer, letting the warmth of the fire wash over her. "Yeah, no, she didn't get fired. She quit. Uh, not exactly cut out for the camp thing. You know?"  
  
Sarah had definitely caught Angela with some pot the summer before, but it wasn't as if she didn't accept a hit when offered and the director doesn't seem to have a problem with overlooking anything that doesn't directly affect the kids. The lack of enthusiasm, however, and constant refusal to participate in arts and crafts got her one hell of a talking to. Sarah still isn't entirely sure whose idea it was for Angela to leave.  
  
"You know Daniela's butt got bigger," Quinn says now, smiling wickedly down the log.  
  
Daniela has a pained look on her face but is doing her best to ignore Quinn, and Sarah just doesn't have it in her to take a full summer of this.  
  
"Really? Well she's gonna be your new bunkmate. Raya, you're gonna switch with Daniela, okay? She and Quinn need to learn how to play nice." Sarah bites down on the last word and can't help glancing over at Rachel, who seems to be listening with veiled amusement.  
  
Quinn whines at Sarah's ear and gets up to move somewhere else on the log, deeming Sarah the moment's enemy, and Raya casually shifts in next to Sarah to fill the space and signify that she's above the petty drama.  
  
She's a good one, Sarah's decided. She and the two cousins, Afsheen and Zohal, who are wicked giggly but so far more than willing to participate. If only Sarah could have a whole group of politely enthusiastic kids.  
  
Those three and Naomi are the only new kids, the rest of them faces Sarah saw around camp last year and even interacted with during some of the activities. (She had quite the experience on a canoe trip with Quinn that she's vowed not to repeat, but other than that most of the mixed-group activities are pretty good.)  
  
She's found Madeleine to be consistently responsible, even going so far as to help her clean up a god-awful bird craft last year in the art cabin despite it not being her group's, and Sameera and Ava don't seem to give anyone trouble. Daniela's fine without Quinn and seems to care about keeping her space clean. Sophia, unfortunately, she continues to forget, with a name shared by five other girls this session and a face that could blend in with any crowd. Even though she had her in her canoe last year she still can't keep her in her mind.  
  
She quickly checks the end of the log now to make sure she didn't leave Sophia behind, and Sophia smiles at her like they're in on some joke which only makes Sarah feel more guilty for not giving two shits about her.  
  
Some people are just plain, she reasons. But still, it's a kid. She should know better.  
  
The marshmallow roasting starts not long after, and despite wanting to see Rachel have to deal with the sticky mess of smores the older kids don't need much help. Cosima and Delphine across the fire are already covered in gooey marshmallow, their kids laughing and fighting over who gets the next one, Cosima sticking her dirty fingers in Delphine's face. Sarah smiles.  
  
"Cute," Rachel says of the gesture, in a way that makes it sound entirely not cute.  
  
Sarah rolls her eyes and shifts on the log so she can see Rachel, now that their kids are all at the fire with long pokers and their two logs are empty. Their half of the circle feels barren until Sarah tenses up at the sight of Paul joking around with Tony a couple logs over. She exhales and vows to ignore him if he tries anything.  
  
"I'm curious what took place there," Rachel says, motioning over at Paul.  
  
He's busy pretending to stab Tony with a poker as if they're fencing and Sarah's stomach muscles contract.  
  
"How about none of your business," Sarah says.  
  
Rachel makes a small noise and lifts her shoulders, acknowledging that Sarah's uncomfortable. "He seems like a bit of a dick," she says coolly.  
  
A bubble of a laugh escapes Sarah's mouth. She could swear she sees Rachel smile at the sound but it's gone as quickly as it appeared.  
  
"That's an understatement," Sarah says, wondering maybe if Rachel's cold exterior is only there because she's shy and doesn't know how to reach out. She feels like a bit of a dick herself for assuming so quickly.  
  
Of course the button-down white shirt and pressed shorts she's wearing, to a campfire at the edge of the woods, isn't helping her case, but Sarah can overlook poor fashion taste if the girl just doesn't know how to make friends. The stick up her ass could just be preemptive self-defense.  
  
"You know, some of the counselors dip out after lights out to hang by the boathouse," Sarah offers, chancing a smile in Rachel's direction. "You're welcome to come."  
  
Rachel's little laugh sounds exactly like a slap in the face and Sarah regrets her moment of weakness.  
  
"I'm not here to make friends, Sarah," Rachel says with the venom of whatever lurks in the forest that Sarah suddenly wants to shove her into.  
  
"Oh, nice," Sarah snorts. "Noted. I'll be sure to spread that around."  
  
Rachel tilts her head slightly and smoothes down her top as if nothing can disrupt her Zen moment. "Just as you're spreading yourself around camp, I hear. Or is there more to this Paul story that might redeem you."  
  
Sarah swings her legs back around the log and grits her teeth. "No, that's about it. Guess you were just curious why, but I'm sure you've come up with your reasons."  
  
She doesn't even flinch when Rachel looks her up and down and bites out a sharp  _oh don't worry, I have_  as if this is some sort of verbal knife toss to which Sarah brought feathers. If this is how the bitch wants to play it, this is how it's going to be.  
  
Sarah's only disappointed for the kids' sake.

 

* * *

 

The first full day of camp has Sarah ready to throttle someone and breakfast isn't even over yet.  
  
Apparently the Quinn and Daniela feud is going to be The Event of the summer, with the kids quickly picking sides. (The only person on Quinn's side is Quinn. And tentatively Sophia, if Sarah's remembering correctly. Mostly she doesn't care.) Their half of the long table in the mess hall is silent, Quinn and Sophia joining Sarah on the one side and the remaining eight girls crammed in on the other, and all Sarah wants is a shitty cup of coffee. But every time she stands up, Quinn starts in on Daniela. And despite Daniela's reserve, her shields are quickly crumbling.  
  
"I'm going to bloody kill somebody," Sarah sings very, very quietly under her breath, staring at the dry toast on a napkin in front of her.  
  
She nicked it from Madeleine, who seemed to sense an extra piece was needed. All this drama and Sarah hasn't even been able to grab breakfast for herself. Madeleine also inquired about halal meals for Afsheen and Zohal, who were apparently too shy to ask for themselves; Sarah might as well ask Madeleine to take over for her at this point. If she could only handle Quinn.  
  
"Looks like you could use this," Delphine says, appearing with a Styrofoam cup of coffee and two creamers.  
  
"Delphine, you are a blessed creature." Sarah takes it from her and pours in the creamers, stacking the empty containers on the edge of her napkin once she's done.  
  
Delphine sinks onto the bench next to her with a smile, somehow diffusing some of the tense energy amongst the girls so that a few of them actually manage to eat. She's looking ethereal this morning, her curls gleaming and her loose linen tank apparently the perfect thing for an angel to wear to breakfast, absolutely glowing under the flickering mess hall lights.  
  
"Where's Cos?" Sarah asks after a few sips of coffee, just enjoying Delphine's company.  
  
If someone had told her on her very first day that her two friends would be the French bitch and the white girl with dreadlocks she would have laughed her way home. She's glad she changed her tune.  
  
"Ah, around, I suppose," Delphine says, looking out across the sea of banged up wooden tables. It's mayhem and Sarah doesn't blame her for flinching at a sudden rise of shouting; that's what they get for sharing space with the boys. "Or late, which actually is more likely. I should get her coffee as well."  
  
Sarah frowns at her lot of girls and asks, "Are her kids that bad then?"  
  
Delphine laughs. "No, not at all. We were just..."  
  
"Up late? Gotcha." Sarah winks and laughs as well and the noise seems to offend her girls enough that a handful of them give in and start chatting.  
  
"More or less," Delphine chuckles. "No, we have a good batch this year. My little ones are especially small, I believe. Some of them not yet six. But we only had two criers last night, so maybe tougher than I think."  
  
Sarah shakes her head. "I don't know how you do it, mate. They're still  _babies_. If I had a kid... well I can't say I'd be sending it off to camp at six, you know?"  
  
Delphine nods in agreement, sipping her own coffee. "Well," she says, "it's easier handling them in that they still very much believe in magic. And their problems aren't so large."  
  
She gestures at Sarah's girls (Quinn scowls) and lifts her shoulders, motioning that it is what it is.  
  
Sarah might actually take criers over a night of bickering, now that she thinks about it. She nudges Delphine's foot with her own, to carry on the conversation without having to talk and also let her know that Cosima and the sevens are now entering the mess hall.  
  
"Oh, there she is," Delphine says with a fond smile, her cheeks ever so slightly pink at the sight.  
  
Madeleine catches it and whips around to spot Cosima, smiling to herself when she sees what the fuss is about. Sarah knew she chose right with that one.  
  
"Well I should go," Delphine says, standing up and smoothing down her shorts where there aren't any wrinkles. "Enjoy the coffee. And the fight."  
  
"Thanks again," Sarah says as Delphine takes off, meeting Cosima by the slightly shorter table where the six and seven year-olds are sitting with Art and Mark.  
  
It's nice that the counselors of the young kids look out for each other, Sarah thinks. She can't imagine sharing a table with Paul and the eleven year-old boys, despite Naomi's forlorn looks at her brother across the room. Not to mention that the little kids are small enough to cram forty of them at one table.  
  
Maybe if Tony had the eleven year-olds, and Rachel and Paul could go fuck themselves together. She's probably his type, actually; all cold and unfeeling, ready to treat him like the little boy he is. Sarah could see the two of them getting along quite well.  
  
And then she wouldn't have to feel sick every time she thinks about Paul's hands on her body, because they'd be roaming someone else's soft skin and there'd be another girl to share the blame.  
  
(She pauses, focusing on the rim of her cup, not wanting to acknowledge what the thought of hands on Rachel's skin did to her momentarily. Sarah's fucked up, but not  _that_  fucked up.)  
  
At the very least Rachel wouldn't feel bad for sleeping with Beth's boyfriend. Rachel doesn't feel anything.  
  
At the thought of her Sarah seeks her out at the other end of the table, somehow sitting alone despite her kids filling the benches and perfectly poised with the same breakfast as Sarah – coffee and a dry piece of toast, though no doubt chosen by Rachel herself.  
  
Uppity bitch, Sarah thinks.  
  
"We're swimming today, right?" Naomi asks, tearing her eyes away from her brother.  
  
There's a ripple through the table as her voice cuts through the newest wave of silence, and Sarah sighs inwardly at the course of her pathetic summer. Playing referee to the puberty squad.  
  
"Yeah, after lunch," she replies.  
  
"And we swim with the other eleven year-olds?" Naomi asks.  
  
Sophia shifts her gaze at this, and Daniela looks down at her body. Sarah wants to take all her kids in her arms and tell them they're beautiful and don't need any boy's validation but they might see right through her and figure out she doesn't listen to her own words.  
  
_You're all so much better than me_ , she wills them to believe.  _Probably even Quinn_.  
  
"Yep, with the elevens." And Paul. Who Sarah feels like punching in the face just for making her feel this way.  
  
Naomi smiles down at her plate, satisfied enough to start eating, and Sarah wishes it was possible to steal her brother or hand the two of them off to some other group so they could be together. (Obviously not with Paul though. She doesn't want to send anyone near him.) What Sarah knows of being apart from a sibling is enough to guess at how Naomi must feel.  
  
She makes a mental note to call Felix later, to tell him how much she hates Rachel and still regrets Paul. He'd been afraid she'd fall right back into that the moment she saw him but apparently a year to seethe has done her good.  
  
And her other sibling... She's not even sure she can use that word, knowing so little about her. Just that she was lost to the system and taken in by some crazies who dragged her to Europe, and is now back in Canada being deprogrammed or whatever. Mrs. S calls it healing, but Sarah remembers enough of the first eight years of her life to know some things don't heal.  
  
She met her once, over a video chat set up by the woman who runs the home. Her twin.  _Helena_.  
  
Just seeing her goofy smile and mess of curls was enough to make Sarah miss her, all the time, even when she tries not to think about it. Sixteen years apart. Mrs. S traveled to Canada to find her five years ago, before Sarah even knew, just trying to fight for Sarah's family. And Sarah only got to see her face a year ago.  
  
She'd been so desperate for connections... it isn't as if she blames it for Paul, but she'd been lonely, not yet taken in by Delphine and Cosima, and he seemed to care.  
  
She's so  _stupid_.  
  
Paul laughs across the room and it booms all the way into her bones, setting her teeth on edge. If she could take it back she would in an instant. She wishes she could tell Beth that, desperately.  
  
Part of her wants to get up and go tell Beth right now, despite Alison there at her side, clearly trying to make her laugh over what looks to be even less breakfast than Sarah's. Beth just staring blankly at the table and trying to force her lips into some shell of a smile for Alison. The kind of effort Sarah knows she doesn't give to Paul.  
  
_Fuck him, Beth. You don't need him_.  
  
A sudden hand on hers jerks her out of her thoughts and she realizes it's Madeleine, trying to bring her back to earth.  
  
"Daniela's crying," Madeleine says, motioning towards where Daniela's slumped over her plate in tears.  
  
"Thanks, Madeleine," Sarah says as she shoots a withering glare to Quinn who was no doubt the cause. She's really starting to regret ever saying she wanted her back.  
  
It's deal with Daniela in front of her current tormentor or leave her group alone, so she sucks it up and heads down the table to ask Rachel to watch them for a second. Rachel looks as if she might say something snotty but then catches Daniela crying and Quinn's silent jeers and just nods.  
  
"The ten year-olds are so much less drama," Sarah exhales as Rachel scoots down the bench a little.  
  
"Well," Rachel says, a tiny smile creeping across her lips, "I do have two Isabellas."  
  
Sarah laughs, grateful for the moment to get out of her head. Rachel gives her another affirmative nod to signify that this is all she's getting but at this point, Sarah will gladly accept crumbs if they aren't soaked in poison.

 

* * *

 

Rachel finds herself sitting alone at the edge of the soccer field, supposedly meant to be leading her group in a soccer game but sent off the field by the specialty staff. It isn't her fault if she makes people nervous.  
  
Still, she's the one by herself, perched on a rickety set of bleachers near archery that doesn't exactly build confidence in her. And from the top bench she can see Sarah Manning out of the corner of her eye, physically holding one of her children back from the arrows while trying to console another, something so wild and untethered despite the attempt to reign it in.  
  
Of all the types of people Rachel expected to encounter at a summer camp she did not count on Sarah.  
  
Little Miss Martha Stewart, of course. The resident pothead, yes. A French beauty? Not surprising. She'd even foreseen the likes of Paul and his unkempt cabin-mate Tony, who seems to choose not to shower. And yet something in her was so taken aback by Sarah Manning.  
  
Even watching her now, pinning the bully child in place with a withering look, Rachel can't help but feel like some secret audience to a cleverly-written performance. While Sarah's moves aren't calculated or even considered she flows effortlessly, catching insults in midair and knowing exactly how to diffuse the situation.  
  
It was for this reason Rachel had been tempted to call for her through their shared wall this morning, after watching her with the kids yesterday, to handle a fight that broke out over the one measly cabin shower.  
  
In all honesty it was poor planning to build one shower for eleven people, and if there was room for four toilet stalls and a staff bedroom (if one can call it that, it's quite cramped) then surely there was enough space for a second shower. Nonetheless two of the girls were squabbling and all Rachel could do was stare helplessly, smoothing down her pyjama top, waiting for it to end. She'd relied on a  _child_  to solve the crisis, how embarrassing.  
  
(She'd blame her father for sending her here if she was still twelve and held grudges like that, all emotional and disgusting. But she does admit she wouldn't be in this situation if he hadn't forced her to apply.)  
  
Of course it isn't as if she'd come here thinking she'd be great at this; her experience with children is limited to minor babysitting and a few cousins back in England, who only really seemed to like her as a villain for their imaginative games.  
  
The idea of spending her entire summer with a group of children depending on her was something she'd initially laughed at, but her father's will is strong and somehow he always gets what he desires. Her mother used to say that was where Rachel gets it from, back when- when she was still alive, and still someone who noticed these things.  
  
Rachel runs her hands down the front of her blouse and folds them tightly in her lap. Of all the days to be thinking of her mother.  
  
In the distance she can still hear Sarah Manning trying to mend the wound between two of her girls, voice sharp and tired, and Rachel forces herself to concentrate on her own girls running across the field – their young faces free of worry, hair flying out behind them as if trying to race the wind.  
  
Even the girl with the limp, the small one, Sahar. Rachel hadn't even thought she might not be able to participate with the way her body slants but seeing her chasing the ball with the other kids has Rachel feeling somewhat taken aback. She'd underestimated her.  
  
Last night she'd watched Sahar change into her pyjamas with the rest of the girls, not even batting an eye at the slight difference of her body being potentially on display, mentioning she didn't grow properly inside her mother when it seemed as if no one else would bring it up.  
  
"So half of me's a little shorter, and kinda crooked," she said with a big smile, tugging on her pyjama pants.  
  
Marlow took this opportunity to show everyone the bruise-like birthmark snaking down her back and then Isabella Weaver popped her knee out of place and then back in for everyone to see and it turned into a sort of talent show of the oddities of their small ten year-old bodies. Rachel stood in the doorway of her room and watched, for twenty minutes, waiting for crude remarks that never came.  
  
She'd wondered if prejudice had simply disappeared in a generation until this morning, when Sarah's troublemaker child, the Hispanic one with unkempt hair, started in on a girl who could have been her twin for her weight. As if eleven year-olds need worry about such things.  
  
Maybe Sarah's right – the ten year-olds are significantly less drama, as Sarah put it.  
  
Or maybe Sarah's simply one of those people who causes mayhem around her wherever she goes; some kind of hurricane that drenches anyone within a certain range.  
  
All Rachel can tell for sure at this point is that Sarah isn't someone Rachel cares to be around. And that, unfortunately, it seems as if that's what the summer has in store for her. She's considering purchasing a rain poncho.

 

* * *

 

They return to their cabin after lunch for quiet hour, something Rachel finds charming until she's actually in the cabin with her ten rowdy girls. Apparently 'quiet' means tossing pillows and bedding aside to make a fort and shouting across the cabin about whatever strange bug they spotted on their way back when the cabin's small enough to hear a whisper.  
  
Rachel half considers dealing with it, leaning against one of the dressers with disdain. But then Clementine (she loathes the name, but the girl isn't all that bad) pulls out a deck of cards and the chaos subsides a little.  
  
"Anyone for Pig?" Clementine asks, waving the cards above her head.  
  
Rachel leaves them as they form a circle on the ground and half shuts the door to her counselor's room, enough to overhear anything she might need to deal with but also maintain her privacy. Day two and she's already considering setting up a hammock on the shared cabin porch.  
  
It isn't so much that she minds the closet of a room, consisting of a single bed, a side table squeezed in beside it, and a dresser on the opposite wall to supposedly hold her clothes. She's waiting to unpack until she can snag some wax paper from the mess hall to properly line the cedar drawers.  
  
Of course, she could do without the round mirror above the dresser, which is angled just enough to be able to see herself lying down on her bed and unsettling in the middle of the night. Maybe for others it wouldn't be so unnerving to catch a glimpse of themselves when they aren't paying attention but Rachel can't stand to see any weakness in herself.  
  
Her main concern about the room though, apart from the electrical outlet that was carelessly built under the bed and is nearly impossible to get to, is that thanks to the mirrored construction of the cabins she's very much aware of the wall she shares with Sarah Manning. And that, in the middle of the night, she can hear her snoring lightly and has to picture the girl curled up in her own bed, probably oblivious to the mirror that captures her sleeping form.  
  
She runs her fingers over the uneven shared wall now, wondering if Sarah's in her room or out in the cabin still trying to play referee with her girls. No sounds filter through that let her know either way and she drops her hand to her side.  
  
This is Sarah's second year, she knows. It isn't as if Rachel's been gossiping, but the other staff do talk and Rachel can't help if she overhears.  
  
What she's learned so far from listening in mostly amounts to Sarah having slept with Paul far enough into last summer to know of his girlfriend Beth, who seems to be enjoying herself even less than Rachel. No one talks about Beth, Rachel's noted. Or if they do her little housewife Alison comes at them like an untethered pitbull.  
  
If Sarah regrets her tryst with Paul it isn't something she's advertising, and Rachel really doesn't have time to concern herself with why Paul might have done that in the first place. A small part of her feels sorry for Sarah but every time that surfaces she buries it as fast as she can. Sex doesn't happen by accident; Sarah could have said no.  
  
Her door opening startles her, making her sit down hard on her bed and give a cold look to the child that opened it. Evie.  
  
"Yes?" Rachel demands.  
  
Evie pulls a strand of dark hair into her mouth, sucking on it nervously. "I don't want to play Pig anymore but the other girls say I have to."  
  
"Well that's just ridiculous," Rachel says. "No one can force you to do anything."  
  
She picks a piece of lint off her shorts and expects Evie to go back out but when she looks up Evie is still standing there, small and squat like a potato, blinking and watching Rachel as if she hadn't just responded.  
  
"Yes?" Rachel says again, agitated.  
  
Evie pulls another chunk of hair into her mouth and Rachel resists the urge to yank the hair away from her. What a disgusting habit.  
  
"But they say I  _have to_ ," Evie emphasizes.  
  
If a child could be constructed to annoy then this would be that child. Rachel sighs and stands up, smoothing out the bedspread where she'd been sitting to get rid of the wrinkles. She may be in the middle of the forest but that's no excuse for sloppiness.  
  
"Well let's go then," Rachel says, ushering the potato child out of her room.  
  
The girls have made a cramped circle in the middle of the cabin with only a few of them pressed up against bunk beds and it looks to be an entertaining game, with how the kids slap the cards against the ground next to them. The few who notice Rachel standing on the edge of the room look up nervously but it's only at Evie's taunting noise that all heads rise.  
  
"We just didn't want her to ruin things," Sierra rushes out, knowing full well what Rachel's about to say.  
  
Sierra's statement is backed up by the two girls sitting next to her, Julisa and Raniyah, both of whose names Rachel only remembers because Sierra's barked them out so much in ordering them around. She's made a mental note to keep an eye on that alliance, decidedly not down for any kind of echo of the drama in Sarah Manning's group.  
  
Not that Sierra's anything like Quinn, with her skinny limbs and teeth far too large for her jaw. Rachel wouldn't call her ugly but she definitely has prominent features that will take some time to grow into. But it isn't Quinn's prettiness that has the venom on her tongue – Rachel knows enough about girls to know better than that. There's always a reason for lashing out.  
  
If Rachel were a better person she'd tell that to Sarah, but then Sarah might pin that statement back on her and the lack of alcohol at camp really has Rachel not wanting to hash that out.  
  
"How could Evie leaving possibly ruin things?" Rachel asks in a bored tone, desiring nothing more than to be back in her tiny room staring at the wall.  
  
Sierra glances at Julisa and Raniyah but it's Isabella Chang who speaks up.  
  
"If she goes we have to rearrange the entire game," she says, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. "Basically start over."  
  
Rachel looks at the large analog clock ticking away above the door to the toilet. Twenty-five more minutes of quiet hour.  
  
"The way I see it," she says, leaving her perch near the wall, "if the game isn't working then perhaps we should change the game."  
  
A chorus of whining  _nooos_  break out, along with  _okay! We'll make it work_. Rachel shrugs as she paces towards the circle, bending down carefully to grab the box for the cards and then straightening up with a wicked smile.  
  
"Why don't we see how quickly we can get these cards back in the box," she tells them.  
  
A single card shoots across the circle and slices her ankle. The offending child makes eye contact defiantly, a grin slowly forming on her face, hand still in position to have released the card. All the girls divide their attention between her and Rachel, whose eyebrow simply raises.  
  
"Olivia," she says coolly. "It now seems like you'll be the only one playing. And be sure to come see me later when the toilets need cleaning."  
  
Olivia's eyes darken but fear keeps her mouth shut.  
  
Evie shifts towards Rachel as if concerned the blame for ending the game will be placed on her, so Rachel adds, "and everyone else- in your bunks reading in five minutes or you'll all be giving this place a good scrub."  
  
There's a low murmur of complaints as the girls heave themselves up off the floor, returning pillows and bedding to their bunks, Olivia angrily snatching all the cards off the ground to put away in the box Rachel lets flutter back down. Marlow and Sahar even furtively straighten out their toiletries on the top of their shared dresser, as if Rachel might spot this and give them all another punishment.  
  
Consequence, Rachel reminds herself. Punishment makes it sound like the Dark Ages.  
  
"I'll be on the porch should you need me," Rachel says as she darts back into her room to grab a book.  
  
The girls all watch her warily as she comes back out through the cabin and the noise level rises a little as she lets the screen door slam behind her, though not enough to warrant sticking her head back in for a warning. She has enough faith that they'll figure out it's in their best interest to listen to her.  
  
Letting Sarah Manning dole out the rules was not a wise decision, Rachel notes as she takes a seat on one of the benches on her half of the porch.  
  
It isn't too hot out, warm enough to be comfortable in her shorts, and as she opens her book to the bookmarked page she decides this might be the first time she's come close to enjoying herself – in solitude, away from the kids, not a soul in sight except for a small cloud of mosquitoes above one of the picnic tables.  
  
It's quiet for a good ten minutes until one of Sarah's friends stops by, the white one with dreadlocks who no doubt enjoys herself a good blunt or two. The moment she spots Rachel tucked away on the broad porch she freezes, strange little skirt swishing around her. But then a smile breaks out across her face and she's waving and approaching before Rachel can think to disappear.  
  
"Hey," she says warmly, hopping up the steps. "I'm Cosima. With the seven year-olds. Well, not  _with_  them right now, obviously, they're with Delphine's kids right now, but, you know, generally with them."  
  
"Of course," Rachel says in a toneless voice.  
  
She doesn't get up or even close her book, but Cosima seems to take this as an invitation to join her anyway, dropping down on the bench beside her.  
  
"Sarah hasn't really said much about you, but you're Rachel, right? First year?" Cosima asks.  
  
Rachel wonders if there's a way to get up and leave without seeming rude. "Yes, that's right."  
  
She's waiting for one of her children to come out and get her, another problem cropping up in the ten minutes she's been gone, but for once there's silence coming from inside and not even the wind has anything to say.  
  
"Have you worked with kids before? You seem to know what to do to keep them quiet," Cosima says, motioning at the screen door.  
  
A fly circles around Cosima's head and for a second Rachel wonders if something's died in there, left to decompose in the tangle of hair, but then it moves on and smacks aimlessly at the screen door until that too is deemed uninteresting enough to move on to Sarah's half of the porch.  
  
"Yes," Rachel says again. She glances down at her open book, attempting to read at least a line while Cosima thinks up another question.  
  
It's only as her eyes drift across the page that she realizes it's a lie, her having worked with kids before, and now Cosima sees her as someone who actually wants to be doing this and who applied herself. Horror seeps out and numbs her skin.  
  
"I mean-" she says just as Sarah's door opens and Sarah comes tumbling out, hair a mess.  
  
"Heeey," Sarah says with a big smile, Cosima getting up to hug her. "Hey, Rachel. You been getting to know Cos?"  
  
"She has," Cosima answers for her, also smiling.  
  
Rachel wonders if they know how to frown around each other. Probably, if they're good enough friends. But the way Sarah now keeps Cosima a good six inches away from her has Rachel thinking they might not be as good friends as Cosima believes. Certainly not close enough for Sarah to share any of her secrets with her.  
  
And there's something Rachel can find admirable about Sarah: she knows enough to keep secrets to herself, if Rachel's intuition is correct.  
  
"I'm impressed," Sarah's saying now. "Rachel, I thought you weren't here to make friends."  
  
It's a teasing tone, only further annoying Rachel.  
  
"I'm not a fan of social gatherings," Rachel says, which doesn't seem to help her case.  
  
Sarah and Cosima glance at each other and crack up and Rachel's left feeling small on her little wooden bench. She isn't a fan of social gatherings, but that doesn't exactly seem to be what they're laughing about.  
  
"Ookay there," Sarah says. Her smile slips a little and then she's clearing her throat and brushing hair out of her face, her movements wide and loose.  
  
Rachel lets her hand slip down to smooth out a crease in her shorts, focusing on getting out any remainder of the fold.  
  
"Um," Cosima says, shifting her weight, "well I just stopped by to let Sarah know we're thinking of having a little campfire tonight, just the staff."  
  
"Is that allowed?" Rachel asks, silently scolding herself for the childish edge to her voice.  
  
Cosima laughs. "Well, the director looks the other way. No biggie. I'd invite you, but seeing as you don't like social things..."  
  
She looks over again to Sarah as if this is some joke between them and Sarah manages a smile in return, suddenly a full foot away from Cosima and a hand on the cabin wall to brace herself. For what Rachel doesn't know.  
  
"Yeah, no, invite her anyway," Sarah says, frowning a little. "She might surprise us all and say yes one day, you never know."  
  
"Oh I wasn't trying to be rude," Cosima apologizes, hands flying everywhere. It's a bit mesmerizing.  
  
Rachel shuts her book and gives them both a harmless enough smile as she stands up. "I am not someone who appreciates pity invites," she says. "And it was nice to meet you, Cosima."  
  
With that she pushes past them and heads back into her cabin, letting the screen door slam again behind her and startling all ten girls who are in their bunks reading. She can hear Sarah and Cosima saying something out on the porch, no doubt about her, but she chooses not to listen. She'd meant what she said about making friends; all she promised her father was that she'd stay until the end of the summer. He didn't ask her to play nice.  
  
But then again maybe he should have, she considers as her girls glance up at her fearfully.  
  
Maybe he should have taught her how to when she was still small and stupid enough to learn.

 

* * *

 

Rachel is dragged to the arts and crafts cabin after quiet hour by her group of girls, who are so excited to glue pieces of paper to other pieces of paper that they end up running half the way there and leaving Rachel behind to kick up clouds of dry dirt. Surely the camp could afford to seed all the grassless stretches.  
  
When she gets there, no doubt a dust cloud herself, her girls are dispersed at two tables with another group – Alison's, who eyes Rachel with as much disdain as Rachel feels for this whole experience as she tries to slip in quietly.  
  
Only Clementine seems to notice Rachel come in, her head of dark curls bouncing as she quickly looks away.  
  
Alison rushes over as soon as the door shuts and gives a sharp wave to the art specialist waiting at the front. "Now that we're all here, Emily, why don't you begin."  
  
Emily has a spread of craft supplies on the table in front of her and a smile so bright Rachel wishes she brought sunglasses but the children have their eyes trained on her, eagerly awaiting her instructions. If Rachel wanted to hear them herself she's out of luck as Alison pinches her sleeve and drags her into a corner to whisper harshly at her.  
  
"Irresponsibility is  _not_  tolerated here," Alison starts, her eyes cold and beady like an angered bird of prey.  
  
Rachel's starting to understand why no one talks about Beth.  
  
"Of course," Rachel says.  
  
Her girls are already uncapping their glue bottles at the table and no one seems to be concerned by the mess that's about to happen but Alison refuses to let her attention drift.  
  
"Excuse me," she says, tapping Rachel's arm. "But I don't think you understand. How is it to look when your children show up  _without_  you?! Just running willy-nilly, no one to keep them from tearing the place apart. Lucky I was here to seat them. Of course this is your first year, I know, and we're supposed to be tolerant."  
  
_Kind_  was the word the director used, Rachel remembers. Considerate.  
  
She purses her lips and attempts to look properly admonished, really not wanting to have Alison coming at her like this for the entire summer.  
  
"Well," she says, "they did run ahead."  
  
Alison's cheeks are pink. Whether it's anger or exhaustion from whispering so fiercely Rachel can't tell, but backed into a corner it's a sure sign she isn't going to win this.  
  
"I'm sure you'd say the same thing if they all ran into the lake and drowned," Alison says before whipping around and heading back over to her side of the room.  
  
Rachel isn't going to follow her but she would, selfishly, like to point out that every child here is able to swim and the lake is never without a lifeguard during daylight hours. Still, she sees the point. If her children run again it had better be towards Alison, and with weapons.  
  
She slowly shifts out of the corner and makes her way across the perimeter of the room, taking in the cupboards and open shelving of every type of art supply available. It seems wasteful to be making crafts that will just get thrown out at home, but all the girls are hunched over small piles of popsicle sticks as if there's nowhere else they'd like to be and Rachel can't fault them for their lack of foresight.  
  
On the other side of the room Alison stares intently at the art specialist, Emily, who's doing nothing more than supervising the disaster playing out on the tables in front of her. It seems as if Alison's waiting for a slip-up or for that smile to falter and it must be such an exhausting way to live life, needing to be the one to monitor everything in case something should go wrong.  
  
She wonders how exactly Alison came to be Beth's; if Beth had a choice in the matter or if Alison just decided one day to care for her, and each day following Beth simply put up with it.  
  
It doesn't seem from watching her that Beth could  _want_  Alison around – but then Rachel doesn't truly know Beth either, only guessing at the cause of the hollowness of her expression, and maybe Alison feels things twice as much for the both of them. If it's symbiosis Rachel has to wonder what Alison gains from this.  
  
(Especially, she notes as Alison rewraps a spool of fishing line, with Beth so firmly planted in her distant relationship with Paul. Alison must know nothing will ever come of her wanting.)  
  
The last thing she wants is to be caught staring at Alison when the girl is a grenade ready to go off so she busies herself with a shelf of construction paper, spending the whole arts and crafts period lining up the different colors so perfectly they all look like solid rectangular blocks. Sahar comments on it as they're putting their structures in the window to dry; a little acknowledgment that it looks a whole lot better.  
  
If Alison notices she doesn't mention it. Her girls are lined up at the door and ready to go as the gong sounds in the distance, signaling an activity change, and the group filters out the door so calmly it's as if they practiced. Rachel just lumps her girls together and directs them to start walking to the archery fields and as they all bump into each other and chatter she wishes she'd agreed to any other job than this.  
  
The only thing worse than being a camp counselor is knowing she's doing a mediocre job of it. And now, knowing Alison knows as well.  
  
It weighs on her the entire time her kids are supposedly learning the lost art of archery, essentially shooting at each other with flimsy arrows and ignoring the specialist's instructions. Of course she could step in and help but it isn't as if she's being paid the specialist rate to teach the activity, so she stands to the side with a grumpy Evie and wishes she cared enough to try to be better.  
  
"Am I-"  _terrible_ , she goes to ask, after a stretch of silence without Evie's sighs, but the girl stares up at her with hair in her mouth and Rachel tells her to never mind.  
  
The last thing she needs is to start asking others their opinion of her, and  _children_  at that. When she cares what they think she'll truly have lost it.

 

* * *

 

Sarah spends her afternoon fielding insults from Quinn, who, apart from making Daniela cry three separate times in two hours, has now decided Sarah is her new target.  
  
It wasn't so bad when the kids were swimming and Sarah laid out to tan on the dock, taking Delphine's advice from last year to never get in the water unless the lifeguards absolutely  _insist_ , but then Paul saw the opportunity to join her and instead of snide remarks of how wide her hips are and the stress zit that's trying to form on her chin she had to deal with Paul.  
  
The second he sat down next to her she instantly regretted wearing a bikini. Even a diving suit would have felt too revealing, but his gaze dragged down her bare skin to the chipped black paint on her toenails and she had to resist the urge to scrub his slime off of her. As if just by breathing his air she was poisoning herself.  
  
"You're fully capable of fucking off," she told him, shielding her eyes with an arm so she didn't have to look at him, but his laugh seeped in anyway.  
  
Ten minutes in she wrapped herself in a towel and stood angrily by the lifeguard's chair, not caring to learn the poor kid's name but listening to him rattle on about all his training just to make the time pass quicker. (And, honestly, to see the look on Paul's face as he watched her smile at another guy.)  
  
Her luck has only improved since, with Quinn catching the moment between her and Paul on the dock and latching on with a vice grip. All through soccer, all through a quick game of Octopus, all through this crappy hike in the woods. She definitely assigned partners but somehow Quinn is at her side, making kissing noises and occasionally tripping over rogue roots.  
  
At least it isn't Daniela. The girl seems to even be relaxing a little, at the back with Madeleine and the cousins. Anything that breaks Quinn's focus from her is worth it, even if it means wearing the target for however long this continues.  
  
Which won't be much longer with how Quinn's carrying on. Sarah has resisted the urge to slap her so far, but her long-winded narration of whatever she imagines taking place between Sarah and Paul is getting borderline explicit and Sarah has had enough.  
  
"O _kay_ ," she grunts, putting a hand over Quinn's mouth.  
  
Everyone sort of stumbles a little as they take in the crude action but nobody manages to fall.  
  
Sarah recoils as Quinn licks her palm, snatching her hand back and wiping it on her shorts with a grimace. "That's disgusting," she tells her.  
  
Quinn's dark eyes flash.  
  
"So are you and-"  
  
"Yeah?" Sarah interrupts. "Well I don't wanna hear it."  
  
"Well if you didn't want to hear it why'd you do it?" Quinn provokes, her sneer wide even as she trips over a rock and has to grab onto Sarah's side to stay upright.  
  
It isn't even too hot to complain about being forced to hike, but Sarah's covered in sweat and has dirt streaks up her legs and with Quinn clutching her shirt with her little claws it's just  _too much_.  
  
She stops.  
  
And the girls all stop behind her, bumping into each other, but more or less still standing.  
  
"Another mushroom?" Sameera asks, trying to peer around the group.  
  
Sarah takes in a deep breath and stares up at the canopy of green above her, ignoring the voices for one bloody second of relief. Then she comes back to earth and pries Quinn's hands off her and drops down into the dirt like her main goal was to bring them up here to sit.  
  
The girls stare at her before a couple of them sit down as well.  
  
"My legs hurt," Ava says, taking a seat in the dry leaves and dirt.  
  
"I'm tired," Zohal agrees as she joins her.  
  
Most of them are sitting before Quinn finally speaks again, and this time it's in a quiet voice as if Sarah's taken the fight out of her. "You're crazy," she says.  
  
Sarah nods and pats the ground next to her. "Side effect of hanging around you. Come on, sit."  
  
Quinn relents and sits down and Sophia and Raya finally sit as well. The whole group is cross-legged in the dirt, backpacks still on like a pack of sweaty turtles. If Sarah had any energy left she might whip out her camera to capture this awful moment.  
  
To her surprise none of them ask why they've stopped in the middle of their hike to sit in the path, instead just quieting down enough so that all they hear is birds hidden away in the trees and the soft rustle of a breeze slipping through the forest. It's the closest to nature Sarah's felt in a while, being from the city, and she shuts her eyes to take it all in: the slight pant of their breathing, the distant bird calls, the cicadas that she hadn't noticed until now.  
  
"When I was little I used to think that sound was sunlight," Sarah says of the hum, and the kids listen until they hear what she's talking about.  
  
"What is it?" Quinn asks.  
  
Madeleine answers for her in the first pleasant interaction Quinn's had with another kid all day and Sarah contemplates staying in the forest forever.  
  
"Can we play Eye Spy?" Afsheen asks, looking up at the trees.  
  
From where they sit nearly everything looks green, glowing so brightly against the dark dampness of the forest floor it's almost neon. Sarah can't imagine what they could find in here to actually guess at but says "go ahead" nonetheless, happy to rest for a bit and to not have to pretend to know what kind of animal poop they've spotted by a tree.  
  
The game lasts for about fifteen minutes, everyone quickly growing tired of the color green, but in that time Sarah sits next to Quinn and tries to remind herself of all her good qualities.  
  
There was a reason Sarah hoped she came back this year – it's only as Quinn withdraws from the game and lets her head rest against her knees that Sarah remembers why. She'd seemed like a puzzle last year, some kind of bomb whose explosion could be avoided if anyone figured out what built her. Sarah only really saw her in passing, but figured, with her own turbulent childhood, she might stand a chance at getting closer to the core of it.  
  
And now with Quinn sitting next to her, walls down for just a moment, Sarah decides there must be a reason she's Quinn's latest target. Maybe it's like trying to fight herself.  
  
She reaches out and brushes a knot back into place in the rest of Quinn's tangle of hair, ignoring the look Quinn gives her as she peeks up from her knees. Her hand lingers on Quinn's forehead and she thumbs the skin a bit, just appreciating this rare softness to her face; the lack of anger making her hard.  
  
"What?" Quinn whispers, still hugging her knees and looking incredibly small in the dirt.  
  
Sarah gives Quinn's cheek a little pat. "You're not a bad kid, you know."  
  
It's brief, the second of gratitude on Quinn's face before someone shouts out a guess and Quinn buries herself in armor. Sarah tries to cling to it as Quinn sours.  
  
"You think I've never heard that before?" Quinn says, standing up and brushing herself off. "I'm awesome."  
  
Sophia's head raises. "Are we going?"  
  
Naomi and Raya stand up, wobbling a bit with their backpacks and wiping the dirt from their bare legs and Sarah relents that the moment of peace is over. She motions for everyone else to get up and heaves herself upright, wishing nothing more than to be back in her bed, door shut, pretending she can't hear their whispering or the weird pacing of Rachel through the shared cabin wall.  
  
"Come on, meatheads," she says as she rubs at her eyes. "We'll hike back and see if there's time to get cleaned up before dinner."  
  
Afsheen and Daniela are busy poking each other teasingly but the rest of the girls are more or less getting back in their clump, Madeleine dutifully herding them from the back. It isn't as if Sarah demanded straight lines or anything when she started out but she does like to pretend she's kind of organized, so seeing them get their shit together without her prompting feels pretty good; like despite Quinn's antics it might not be the summer of hell she'd conceded to having.  
  
As she tightens the consistently looser strap of her backpack, some crappy little thing her foster mum has apparently had since the eighties, Quinn gently bumps into her arm.  
  
"I've abandoned my partner," she says as if Sarah hadn't already figured this out.  
  
Sarah pulls the strap back over her shoulder like this might ready her for hiking all the way back. "I know, Quinn."  
  
In all honesty she'd envisioned more of a feel-good nature walk when she planned her counselor-led activity for the day, just putting the word 'hike' on paper to make it seem more legit. If she'd remembered about the incline of this certain path she would have decided on canoeing (watching her kids flip without helping them for forty minutes) or some bullshit like jewelry-making.  
  
She's pretty sure Alison booked the art cabin for this activity block though anyway, hell-bent on teaching her eight year-olds the lost art of macramé.  
  
Quinn nudges her arm again now, her hair somehow even messier than five minutes ago. "She's in good hands though," Quinn promises. "I left her with Raya and Naomi."  
  
Sarah glances back to what's slowly looking like two lines, where Ava is sure enough with Raya and Naomi, looking relieved to be free from her assigned partner. At her look Madeleine physically starts to move people into place with the exact Day Two exasperation Sarah's been feeling since the bugle sounded this morning.  
  
"So I can be your partner," Quinn says, and Sarah notices she's latched on to her arm.  
  
"Yeah, sure." It's no use fighting it at this point.  
  
Either Quinn's going to use the whole hike back to taunt her about Paul or she'll finally learn to be quiet, which is almost more unsettling. Both cases Sarah ends up paying more attention to the kid beside her than where her feet are landing. Both cases she'll probably end up falling before they make it back to camp.  
  
"Got everything?" she asks the group, who call back an unconvincing  _yes_.  
  
Whatever. If they leave their shit here, they'll learn how quickly a person gets over loss.  
  
She leads her stumbling, non-athletic group back down through the tangle of roots and rocks, her own feet slipping carelessly over piles of dry leaves. God forbid she ever have to do this after a rainstorm. It'd be like a giant, muddy slip-n-slide.  
  
One of the girls in the back starts singing a campfire song, something about the Titanic, and within minutes the whole group behind her has joined in. She'll never understand what's so appealing about group singing but so long as they're happy she's not going to stop it. And even Quinn, so snug against Sarah's side her arm is slick with sweat, seems to be humming along a little.  
  
She feels like capturing the moment to send to Cosima later, to finally have proof that Quinn's not the demonic force they've all seemed to paint her as.  
  
Maybe a little evil, but Sarah probably wasn't too far off at eleven either. She should ask Mrs. S.  
  
All she really remembers about that age is that Mrs. S seemed to care enough about her to legitimize her guardianship that year in the spring, which mostly felt like a slap in the face when Mrs. S said it was needed to move to Canada the year after. And the hot, simmering anger that's been with her as long as she can think back. And sometimes, if she concentrates hard enough, she can conjure up the scent of the tiny flat they were living in at that time – cigarettes and cabbage, and a damp mustiness they never quite got rid of.  
  
If they'd had enough to send her to a summer camp back then she probably would have given Quinn a run for her money, with how frustrated she still was with so much of her life. Maybe it's for the best she never hung out with many kids.  
  
This time last year she was stumbling through this same forest, ankles bloody from kicking up sticks, chasing her kids in what Paul thought would be a great game of Manhunt until the gong sounded for dinner. Different kids of course, but the same chilled feeling of needing to compare and contrast her own life to the laughing screaming kids surrounding her. As if locating that divide between them will somehow mend the chasm in herself, and she'll be a better counselor for it, and they won't always make her think the worst.  
  
Not all of them come from dark pasts, Delphine reminded her last year.  
  
But it still seems like it, the sun cutting deep through the trees as it tries to sink into the lake. She's a full year ahead and still finds herself rolling the thought around on her tongue like a splintering glass marble, leading them back to the cabin, just waiting for a shard to draw blood.  
  
It's only as they're washing up for dinner in a sweaty haze that she finds dried beads of blood along her ankles where anything could have grabbed her this time.

 

* * *

 

One of the shittier parts of camp always seems to be the food, tonight's meatloaf no exception despite Madeleine's futile attempt to salt and pepper some life back into it. But they've all managed to evenly space themselves out at the table this evening, something Sarah almost wishes hadn't happened with little elbows finding her sides every time the conversation rises up in excitement. Even Quinn seems a little more docile from her spot at the end of the bench.  
  
The rest of the hall is equally animated – and yet Paul and Tony somehow cut through the noise with their banter from the other side of the room, as boisterous as their kids. If Sarah put in earplugs she could probably still hear it.  
  
Naomi's been watching her since Quinn started in on her with the Paul shit, still eyeing her occasionally every time Paul's voice filters over to their table. She'd tell her it's nothing if she could manage to convince herself. Her girls aren't stupid, obviously picking up on Paul's flattery and wandering hands. She just has to hope they aren't taking this in as something to want from a boy.  
  
She's been surveying the room to keep an eye on things in an attempt to force her thoughts elsewhere, eager to get away from Paul and the lumpy meatloaf. Even with mashed potatoes it's a strange paste.  
  
Delphine waves every so often until Cosima gets there, the two of them huddled on the bench as if parents of their twenty tiny kids. The boys are all piled together on the one side of the room, Rudy and Seth doing their best to keep their kids quiet as Paul and Tony wind them all up, little bits of food flying across the tables that no one seems to notice. Beth is... present. Hands folded in her lap, Alison talking vigorously beside her as their girls chatter away. A few of them are singing a song Sarah doesn't recognize and she dreads having to lead any activity with Alison this summer, knowing she'll come away from it with a dozen new songs stuck in her head.  
  
She glances back to Beth one last time before turning back to her table, wishing staring at her every day was enough for Beth to know she's sorry, wanting to pull her outside for a conversation she's not brave enough to have.  
  
_He made me feel a little less lonely. Now he makes me nauseous and I don't know how you stand it_.  
  
She accidentally catches Quinn's eye, unable to look away before Quinn notices the unguarded guilt on her face. All she gets is a weird quirk of the eyebrows and then Quinn's back to poking at her meatloaf but it still sits hard in Sarah's throat.  
  
She needs to get her shit together before it starts affecting her kids.  
  
The worst she could do would be drag them into this.  
  
A sudden swell of laughter from the other end of the table draws her attention to Rachel's group, where Rachel has somehow put smiles on all the kids' faces and is either a magician or knows a truly impressive joke the way they're beaming at her. Maybe she's just one of those people who does better with kids than people their own age, Sarah decides.  
  
All she knows is that she's not looking to start another fight at camp, too tired already from what she accidentally did to Beth (and by proxy, Alison) to intentionally burn anything with Rachel. If the girl doesn't want to hang out with the rest of the staff then that's on her; Sarah will keep inviting her as long as it's still polite and no one can fault her for it. She'll even put up with Rachel's imploring remarks about Paul, knowing she'll hear enough soon anyway to satiate her curiosity and move on to something more interesting. Something happening this summer, even.  
  
She smiles when Rachel looks her way and takes a tiny bit of pride in the fraction of surprise she catches in Rachel's eyes – as if Rachel was looking for the same cold front in return, not knowing what to do with kindness.  
  
This is a game Sarah can play. This kind of manipulation is what she does best.  
  
She forgets about it during the rest of dinner, with Quinn refueling and targeting Raya this time instead, decidedly not a fan of the little braids she wears in her hair and making this known to the group. Another meal, another catfight. But Raya seems to almost be expecting it and simply ignores it, shifting a little towards Daniela to carry on her conversation, and despite a few more attempts from Quinn to keep the tirade going it dies out by the time Sarah's walking them over to the rec hall for movie night.  
  
One might even call her girls friendly as they laugh with each other in the encroaching dusk, swatting away mosquitoes and running ahead of Sarah in a way Alison would totally chastise.  
  
But she lets them anyway, choosing instead to breathe in the humid July air and follow behind them like an ageing sheepdog, an eye on everyone but also removed enough to let them feel some sort of independence. The rec hall isn't too far a walk. Just down the path from the cabins, edging on the forest but still enough in a clearing to not need flashlights.  
  
She catches up with them as the grass starts up again, hopping up the creaky wooden steps to the hall to grab the screen door from Naomi. All the groups are filtering over here to watch some sappy kids movie before bed so she'll no doubt run into Alison at some point. Better at at least look like she's trying.  
  
"Can I sit with my brother?" Naomi asks after Sarah thanks her for holding the door.  
  
Paul has his boys up against the side of the room, the lot of them taller than everyone else by a head and yet somehow still small in Paul's presence. She hates how he only knows how to dwarf people. Naomi's brother Nate seems to be one of the quieter kids, actually sitting down, another quiet boy with him, and Sarah's sure the groups will get all mixed up as soon as the movie starts anyway.  
  
"Yeah, I don't see why not," she says, smiling back as Naomi grins at her.  
  
Naomi glances over at where the rest of their group's converging at an open spot of floor, too close to Beth's group for Sarah's liking. The big hall suddenly feels a whole lot smaller.  
  
"Can I bring Raya?" Naomi asks.  
  
Raya trots over at hearing her name and Sarah laughs. "Yeah, of course," she says. "Enjoy yourselves."  
  
Naomi practically drags Raya to the other side of the room, her brother's face lighting up as she drops down to sit with him and his friend. Sarah had forgotten how much they resemble each other until seeing them together again – they somehow even move the same. She wonders if Helena moves at all like her.  
  
"The rest of you can sit where you want," she tells her remaining girls, but they all seem content to just sit where they've been standing on the edge of Beth's group.  
  
Sarah catches a glimpse of Beth's dark bun and instantly stills, expecting someone to shout at her from somewhere. Obviously unrealistic but she's been having Alison nightmares ever since they parted ways last summer.  
  
Beth comes over to her almost by accident, her movements so subtle Sarah hardly realizes they're standing next to each other until Beth's fingers graze her arm. Then they just stand there and survey their girls and Sarah doesn't notice she's listening to Beth's soft breathing even with the din of the room until it stops. And Beth glances over at her, and Sarah's stomach twists.  
  
"I didn't know if you'd come back," Beth says, almost a murmur.  
  
Out of the corner of her eye Sarah's scanning the room for Alison, who either isn't here yet or is behind her with a knife just waiting for her to mess up.  
  
It's the first time Beth's talked to her since last summer, not even giving her a word when they were paired up for a trust exercise during orientation week that they both buggered up (by accident or on purpose she's still not sure), and it's surreal; the kind of thing she pictured a thousand times after the summer ended, never once coming up with a decent way to handle it.  
  
"Well," she says stupidly, feeling Beth tense up beside her, "you know, it's hard to stay away."  
  
It's possibly the worst thing she could have said. Quinn pops up from the group as if she might come over with a complaint to save Sarah and it's the only time Sarah's ever looked forward to her whining but then she's back down again, apparently only needing to see what's happening.  
  
Beth finally chuckles a little and shakes her head. "You've got that right."  
  
Sarah manages a smile and even turns to see more than just half of Beth's face, not taking in until now how pretty she is under the exhaustion. Paul obviously has a type.  
  
She considers just drifting away and pretending to chat up literally anyone else in here, maybe even one of the sports specialists who's trying to set up the projector, but Beth lets out a soft breath and Sarah just can't.  
  
"Does it bother you that they still talk about it?" she asks, her ears burning as she speaks.  
  
Beth tilts her head, maybe watching one of her girls or maybe listening for the creak of Alison behind them ready to pounce. Then she smiles, somehow even sadder than Sarah could imagine.  
  
"Does it bother you?"  
  
Sarah's tongue is suddenly too big for her mouth and she didn't have a real answer anyway, probably something pathetic and too nice and pandering to what she knows Beth doesn't want, but Alison finally does appear (late, with one of her girls bandaged up) and practically snatches Beth away and Sarah's left standing on her own as Alison snakes her arm through Beth's where Sarah had just been.  
  
Maybe she's trying to cleanse her or something. Like Sarah's a poison.  
  
She takes a seat on one of the tiny benches at the back of the room, knowing as the lights dim that she won't be able to see a thing but really not caring about A Bug's Life. Twenty minutes into it she's joined by Rachel, who, in the dark, is almost comforting, and nothing makes sense anymore.

 

* * *

 

Back when Sarah was young, she and Felix would play a game in the park near their flat that essentially consisted of them pretending to be lost in the woods and confronting great dangers. In retrospect it was a decent way for two foster kids to deal with some of the helplessness they felt in the system, Mrs. S always sipping tea on a bench nearby. But every time she walks through the forest at camp she can't help thinking about it – how convinced they were that monsters lurked in the shadows, and that they alone could defeat them.  
  
Last year about a few weeks in she called Fe and asked if he remembered, and of course he did but she couldn't convey the exact reason she needed to tell him and it just sounded stupid. Like she was trying to hold onto something they clearly didn't need any more.  
  
Maybe he's learned to compartmentalize these things better than she has; maybe at thirteen it doesn't matter, that they were once small and scared and trying desperately to deal with that.  
  
She's thinking about it all again tonight, loudly making her way through the forest to get to the campfire, her girls all in bed, knowing full well an easy path could take her straight to the fire pit but for some reason in the woods despite that. She'd walked her girls back along the edge of the forest as well when the movie was over, just needing to confront it. To see that... maybe to see that it didn't really matter if it was empty or not.  
  
Most of her would much rather be in her bed right now, ignoring the sounds of Rachel's fucked up little bedtime routine through the wall. But she told Cosima she'd come to the fire and someone always has alcohol (although realistically she could always just drink her own back at the cabin, having enough to last her probably two summers here) and after making a big show of inviting Rachel she'd be a flake to not show up herself. The last person she expects to see at the campfire is Rachel anyway, but on the off chance that Rachel decides to surprise everyone she wants to be there. To at least see.  
  
A sudden cracking noise from somewhere closer to the path makes her jump, skin crawling with how much it sounds like footsteps.  
  
Obviously she knows it isn't any of the monsters she and Felix imagined when they were kids (maybe she should have brought it up when she called him tonight though, just to hear him laugh about it) but the sound grows steadily closer until she can see a form in the light from the distant mess hall and her throat constricts.  
  
It's- bloody Rachel?  
  
She nearly laughs but instead hangs on to the side of a tree to stay hidden. Not like Rachel could see her in the darkness anyway, wearing all black and a probably tangible cloud of bug spray.  
  
Rachel's in what looks like a pyjama set, something shiny and white, and not at all heading in the direction of the campfire but straight for the mess hall – if Sarah didn't know any better she'd say she was breaking in. Or, walking in. They don't exactly lock it in case the supervisory staff want anything.  
  
She holds her breath until Rachel's small form has disappeared into the door, gone into the light.  
  
Maybe the girl has some secret food habits she doesn't want to share, or has learned she can't exist on coffee and dry toast alone. (Sarah did  _not_  miss the way Rachel's plate was devoid of meatloaf or mashed potatoes – just a sad piece of what they called garlic bread and some steamed broccoli.)  
  
Sarah smacks her flashlight against her leg to try and get the weak beam a little brighter and then goes on towards the fire, not needing to dwell on this as well.  
  
It's a pretty decent turnout tonight; some of the counselors from the senior camp, housing the twelve-to-fifteen year olds, came down through the hills everyone calls The Mountains, Sarah's favorite bubbly drunk Krystal already pouring what looks to be champagne. Shay, the eccentric blonde Cosima's admitted to crushing on a few years back, is giving out massages across one of the logs and Sarah knows she doesn't have to look far to find Cosima and Delphine.  
  
They're on one of the half-log benches behind the big logs, under an unnecessary blanket watching Shay with varied expressions. Cosima must have told Delphine about her crush but Sarah's not sure she's taking it as pleasantly as she's pretending.  
  
"There's the woman of the hour," Paul cries out as Sarah half emerges from the shadows.  
  
The crowd looks up, Sarah trying to mask her grimace as a smile as Paul comes over. Krystal waves with a drink in her hand like they've never helped each other vomit before and Delphine rises slightly in case Sarah needs assistance. She gives her an appreciative nod as she swerves away from Paul's open arms.  
  
"Yeah, got a bit caught up in some kid drama," she excuses, running a hand through her hair and joining some of the other guys on a log.  
  
It's the only spot she can guarantee Paul won't follow, being flanked by the brothers and that weird rockabilly guy from the senior camp. Still, he brings her a drink a second later, his gestures wide to show her he means no harm.  
  
She'd like to show him how much harm  _she_  means.  
  
He goes back to where he and Tony are constructing some sort of stick house with kindling, close enough to the fire to be a concern to anyone sober, but if the quiet Christian girl from the senior camp who mainly comes to take care of Krystal (and sometimes flirt with Mark) isn't concerned then Sarah's not going to bother herself with it. Besides, the more they're focused on their sticks the less she has to worry he'll go and say something stupid to make it all worse.  
  
Probably the only saving grace of these fires is that Beth rarely shows up anymore, Alison even less. Sarah can't imagine what she'd do if Paul even breathed near her with Alison watching.  
  
Beth used to be a staple at these things, according to Cosima, back when she and Paul were in their honeymoon phase and everyone was seriously convinced they'd get engaged as soon as Beth hit eighteen. But then she just...  _lost it, a little_ , Cosima called it. Disappeared into herself in a way they hadn't seen before, something much more than her bouts of withdrawal they were all kind of used to.  
  
Sarah's first campfire she'd watched Beth sit quietly at Paul's side, like a bag he was afraid to set down, while he played guitar and downed beers and talked to nearly everyone but his girlfriend.  
  
A few beers in Sarah tried to approach Beth to ask if she was okay or something (she just remembers needing to check in with her, not really understanding it) but Paul stepped in between them – literally separated the two of them, and Beth didn't say a word when his hand crept down Sarah's back. Sarah wanted to say something then.  
  
_Tell him it's not okay_. Or  _tell me to stay away from him_ , anything she's learned to expect from the girls who hang around guys who want her.  
  
Beth looked away. And then the next campfire she sat with Art, and the next one Sarah didn't see her at all.  
  
"Is everything all right?" Delphine's standing beside her now, looking down at her with a plastic cup in her hand.  
  
The brothers are gone and the log beside her is empty and she wonders when that happened.  
  
"M'good," she swears. The little gesture with her own cup doesn't go too well, but she's only drunk about half of it so she can't even blame it on the alcohol.  
  
Delphine frowns at the response but then the smoke blows in their direction and whatever she was going to say is eaten up by the dark plumes.  
  
"I hate white rabbits," Cosima says as she comes up behind Delphine with something that clearly isn't champagne.  
  
Delphine smiles and dips her head, effortlessly letting Cosima into her side. "You know I hate that expression. It makes no sense to me."  
  
Sarah can definitely remember hearing Shay say it at some point, maybe last year right around the time she was holding back Krystal's hair in the mouth of the woods and trying to drunkenly encourage the vodka vomiting without losing it herself.  
  
She tries to bite back a grin as Cosima surreptitiously sneaks a glance at the massage log.  
  
"Yeah, it's a little..." Cosima does a funky hand gesture, spraying Sarah's bare legs with her drink in the process. "Oh shit, Sarah, I'm so sorry, let me-"  
  
And then she's squatting down trying to wipe it off with the sleeve of her flimsy cardigan, which is essentially sheer and non-absorbent. Rum, Sarah realizes, by the smell. Someone's been holding out. Delphine joins the clean up as well, this time providing the blanket they were sitting under before and sort of wrapping Sarah's legs in it once they're dry.  
  
It's not really cold, and they aren't really drunk, but Sarah appreciates it anyway.  
  
Sometimes going through the motions makes her feel better.  
  
"You know I saw Rachel on my way here," she starts to say as the girls sit down with her, but then they're saying something to each other that she doesn't catch and neither of them hear her.  
  
She's not sure what they'd say about that anyway; Cosima thinks Rachel needs to be taken down a peg, based on their one meeting, and Delphine, while not yet having the joy of a real conversation has done some observing, believes she isn't suited for the camp environment and it's a matter of time before she cracks.  
  
Which, yeah, to both of them. But Sarah also saw the way Rachel faltered when she and Cosima were laughing at the social gathering comment and maybe it's more than this. Or just something else.  
  
In a weird, backwards and fucked up way she kind of reminds Sarah of Beth. But that's not something she can share. Not when everyone seems to believe Sarah only fucked Paul to hurt Beth, like any of that was a planned action. They'd just hear that she thinks Beth's a cold bitch as well and completely write her off.  
  
God, the last thing Paul was is planned. She'd promised– well, not really her family but herself, that she'd stay boy-free that summer. No drama. No repeats of the same destructive patterns that have been plaguing her for years.  
  
"There's no one there like Vic, yeah?" Felix had asked the very first time she phoned home.  
  
She'd sworn on her life. Crossed her heart. And Felix sounded relieved, to not have to worry about that for once. To know she was safe.  
  
But Paul isn't Vic and she hates herself for the comparison. He's a dick, a cheating bastard, but he couldn't even come halfway to where Vic left her the first time – the bruises, and the record, and Mrs. S losing even more trust in her. As if she chose that. No, Paul isn't anything like Vic.  
  
He's just another thing for Sarah to regret, this one with the sad face of a girl who didn't deserve it. And Sarah doesn't know how to swallow that away.  
  
She doesn't even finish her second drink tonight; nearly everyone else is at least tipsy, a few (Krystal, Rudy) drunk despite it being the first campfire of the summer. There's something about sitting on the slightly damp log without seeing Beth's face through the fire that has her stomach churning and when half the group leaves and Paul's still there she's glad she's sober.  
  
Delphine and Cosima have disappeared into the forest by the time he finally makes his way over, her half of the campfire disappointingly empty.  
  
"Look," he says, sitting down beside her, a surprising space between them.  
  
He doesn't add anything for a while though, just staring out at the fire like maybe the words are burning before him; ash and char where everyone's been tossing newspaper, all wanting to feel powerful enough to make something catch.  
  
Sometimes it's nice being with him. She doesn't admit it when she thinks about the rest of it, but in the quiet moments, in the moments without Beth or his hands on her or anything outside of it, he isn't the antagonist she's made him up to be in her mind. He's just a guy trying to connect with someone who might actually look back at him.  
  
"You didn't have to do anything if you didn't want to," he says after a long while.  
  
They're the only two on this half of the fire. She can hear Krystal laughing somewhere but can't see through the smoke or growing flame.  
  
She picks at a loose thread on her black cutoffs, hoping it all just unravels. "I know," she says. Her voice is hoarse.  
  
She blames it on the smoke.  
  
He exhales, then takes a long sip of beer, and then his eyes are on her in a way she isn't used to.  
  
"I still- I still love her," he says. He stops looking at her.  
  
She glances over and he's suddenly just a boy – small and tired, the fire's reflection making his eyes resemble liquid gold. If she's supposed to feel sorry for him she won't, but he still seems so young.  
  
"Yeah, well, funny way of showing it," she tells him.  
  
Her pulse is quickening, either the alcohol hitting her or a combination of sitting near Paul with a giant fire in front of them that she could easily toss him into. She's angry again and she hates that it makes her feel like crying.  
  
He doesn't say anything when she stands up, tossing the blanket over her shoulder with a waft of rum and Delphine's soft perfume. She could leave him at the fire for someone else to throw in. Let Alison know he's hers for the taking (and really, why Alison hasn't come after him yet is a mystery). (Or maybe it isn't but Sarah won't be the one to say it.) Just disappear and let this be the end of it, but for some reason she turns back to him.  
  
"You know," she says, hating the gentle way he looks at her, "Beth didn't ask for any of this. And with whatever she's going through, I don't know why you'd want to make it worse."  
  
It's enough to make the churning of her stomach subside a little, enough to walk away.  
  
She spies him still sitting on the log as she says goodbye to an affectionate Krystal, who pulls her down for a hug and sloppy kiss on the corner of the mouth, thanking her for coming out like this is one of Krystal's no-doubt blowout parties back home. If Paul wants her sympathy he can pry it from her cold, dead hands. He may not be like Vic in most senses, but he still knows how to hurt someone he's supposed to love.

 

* * *

 

It's nearly too late for Rachel to get in two full sleep cycles before the morning bugle goes but she sits at the edge of the forest anyway, close enough to see the doors to the cabin should anything happen but still able to smoke in privacy.  
  
It's arguably her worst habit, she knows. This includes an ant farm that's now a graveyard and thinking about her mother.  
  
At its heart it's the contrast between the dirty habit and the cold, clean exterior she maintains that makes it so enjoyable, knowing that should anyone catch a glimpse of her with a cigarette between her poised fingers they would be taken aback at someone like her doing such a disgusting thing.  
  
She'd used it as a reason why she shouldn't apply for this job when her father was first insisting, thinking at the very least he'd be horrified to know his precious daughter was a smoker and have to confront that, but he'd had words with the director that a good chunk of the staff each year were smokers as well and it was overlooked as long as the children weren't aware. Of course. Men are so willing to overlook anything they don't want to deal with.  
  
She's rewarding herself tonight for finally lining the drawers of her dresser, wax paper stolen from the mess hall probably around the same time Sarah Manning was vomiting in some bush. Rachel's drawers are pristine and she has to congratulate herself.  
  
The smoke tugs on her lungs a little, it being a few days since her last cigarette and the final curls of humidity still somehow clinging in the hazy air. She inhales deeper the next time to force the feeling.  
  
It isn't entirely preferable, sitting on what is either a large rock or a small boulder close enough to trees to no doubt be in range of dropping spiders. But the alternative is leave her children (and Sarah's, despite her refusal to take responsibility) for her own personal pleasure and wander down to the lake to smoke and she will not shirk her responsibilities like that. Unlike a certain someone who still isn't back yet.  
  
Sitting around a campfire with people she can't stand doesn't sound at all appealing and she still can't see why Sarah would willingly put herself in that position, with what they're saying about her in regards to Paul and Beth. She wonders momentarily if Beth would have come to that sort of event but decides against it, choosing to believe Beth is above it or at the very least tired of it. No, it would just be Paul and Sarah, most likely snuggling on some log while everyone around them talks. And then come morning Sarah would act all offended that she's being blamed for her own actions, as if she's the innocent party in this. Ridiculous.  
  
Rachel's smoked more than half of her cigarette before she realizes and grips the stone beneath her to try and ground her thoughts.  
  
As she does so she becomes aware of the sound of something approaching, soft and creeping as if trying not to be heard. There's a dim beam of light cutting through the trees and as Rachel rises to dispose of her cigarette in some non-fire starting way she catches sight of Sarah herself, cheeks pink, trudging through the forest.  
  
"What on earth-" Rachel lets slip just as Sarah bites out a "bloody hell, Rachel smokes."  
  
"This is not something to be shared," Rachel snaps as she stubs the cigarette out on the rock.  
  
She drops the butt onto the forest floor, realizing this is essentially littering before remembering she doesn't care what Sarah thinks and hiding the thing under some decomposing leaves. Sarah watches the action with almost glassy eyes, no doubt from the alcohol she's wearing as perfume. Rum. Disgusting.  
  
"That's contraband," Sarah teases, stepping closer. "One word to the director-"  
  
Rachel goes to step back, away from the smoky rum stench of Sarah's clothes and tangled hair, and comes up against the rock. Trapped. "The director's aware," she says, trying to maintain an even voice.  
  
Sarah's eyebrows raise, a smile playing on her lips. "But if the kids found out..."  
  
Rachel doesn't seem to know how to use her hands as Sarah steps forward and takes the pack of cigarettes from her, sliding them into her back pocket in a movement that shouldn't be so mesmerizing. If it were anyone else Rachel would already have a sharp retort on her tongue but instead she finds herself looking directly at Sarah, trying not to want to tell her she has ash in her hair. Trying not to want to take it out herself.  
  
"Those are mine," she says weakly instead. Stupid. Stupid, stupid.  
  
Is she suddenly a child?  
  
"I think I'll keep them," Sarah says and pats her back pocket. Rachel blinks and looks off towards a dark clump of trees. "I've always thought I'd look hot smoking. What do you think, Rachel?"  
  
That clearly isn't her only pack so she doesn't know why she's panicking like this, her chest constricting in an awfully embarrassing way. It's as if she's in primary school again sitting in a mud puddle with all the children laughing.  _I don't like to be pushed_ , she'd told the boy. Stupid.  
  
Sarah's a step closer, the unmistakable scent of champagne on her breath. "You know this shit causes tongue cancer, right?"  
  
"I'm not an idiot," Rachel manages to get out rather dryly.  
  
Sarah nods, looks down at her lips. Fingers the cigarettes through her shorts again.  
  
"Well," she says. "It'd just be a shame if they cut it out."

 _Because I wouldn't be able to verbally combat you anymore?_  Rachel wants to ask, chest still tight and wanting this to be what Sarah means.  
  
But Sarah teeters back on her heels and then is heading towards the cabin with a blanket Rachel doesn't recognize suddenly draped over her shoulders like a cape and there isn't time for anything other than Rachel to smooth down the jacket she's wearing over her pyjama top to protect it from the smoke. Windbreakers crease more than anything. She needs all the folds to disappear before she too can disappear into her cabin.  
  
She stands out there for an extra ten minutes, running her fingers down the unbearable fabric until it feels like enough. And then she prays a tipsy Sarah Manning means no more snoring, for once, so she'll finally be able to sleep without having to think about her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah catches some child germ, Rachel reads Camus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's dedicated to @plutobat for lending me her copy of The Myth of Sisyphus and for generally being a bro about listening to me go on about these characters. also for getting what it's like to be stuck around kids all day.
> 
> I'm aiming for this to be about 5 parts, maybe 6.  
> thanks for all the feedback on part 1, I'm glad you're all enjoying (:

* * *

 

Sarah didn't manage to drag her campers to the morning flag raising once last summer, and in spite (or because?) of the conviction that a hangover is coming for her she's decided today will be the day. She isn't even sure a hangover can come from two drinks but something about her body just feels  _off_ , upon waking up, her tongue thick in her mouth, and each burst of noise from her kids sends her body reeling.  
  
Half of them weren't even aware there was a flag raising to begin with, and she wonders if she should thank Angela from last year for that. She certainly has a few campers who seem excited by the prospect of singing around a flagpole before the consumption of coffee.  
  
The majority of her kids, like Sarah, seem greatly disturbed by having to be this awake at six-twenty in the morning. Raya keeps rubbing her palms over her face and hasn't even put on pants, sitting on her bottom bunk like a zombie. And Quinn's been in the shower so long Sarah's half worried she fell back asleep in there.  
  
It isn't as if they aren't normally waking up around this point, Sarah knowing they'll sure as hell need at least half an hour to get ready for breakfast, but they've been up since the first bugle that Sarah's convinced only exists for kitchen staff and a select few who seem impervious to exhaustion (Alison) and it turns out an extra half hour doesn't really give them much more time with how long it's taking them all to fully wake up. She really doesn't envy their parents when they're getting them up for school, witnessing this mess.  
  
Sarah's not doing much better, still in pyjama pants that she's tempted to wear all day and not even having the energy to brush her hair. Every so often Madeleine glances over to where she's propped up against the doorframe and gives her a concerned smile, signifying that Sarah does indeed look as shitty as she feels. Maybe she's getting a bit too old for these campfires. Or it's some punishment for letting Paul sit next to her that long.  
  
She still hasn't had time to process it, given that as soon as she stumbled back to the cabin she ran into fucking Rachel.  _Smoking_. Which- she should definitely think of a better spot to hide the cigarettes, with how comfortable these girls seem to be waltzing into her room. Quinn especially.  
  
She can just see herself getting kicked out of camp for letting an eleven year-old light up. God, would Mrs. S love that.  
  
As if called by the thought Quinn comes prancing back into the room in a towel, her hair dripping all over the place and somehow even more wild than it is dry. She gives Sarah a smirk with clear intentions but Sarah just blinks back, too tired to even think of what it could be for. Yelling at her last night for taking Daniela's training bra? Saying good morning?  
  
"Ten minutes," she says to the group instead of dwelling on it. Quinn will probably let her know soon enough.  
  
It's technically fifteen minutes until they're supposed to be at the flagpole, but she figures they might actually make it if they think they've wasted this much time. Sophia squeals and dives back into her bag for god knows what and Quinn drops her towel in the middle of the room, apparently needing to be completely naked as she finds something to wear. Sarah just shakes her head and turns back into her room.  
  
At least three of her kids, Afsheen, Zohal, and Ava, are ready to go, sitting on the two bottom bunks in the corner. And Madeleine seems nearly ready, her panic mostly directed at the group. Not too terrible.  
  
It's a little bit quieter in Sarah's tiny room, the cries of  _this is such bull_  (Quinn) and  _if you don't hurry it up I'm going to smack you_  (Madeleine) slightly muted by the wooden walls. She sinks onto her bed and just breathes for a second, pulling her hair back, letting her eyes fall shut.  
  
The flag raising's a good idea. If other groups can do it, there's no reason they can't as well. She's pretty sure Delphine and her six year-olds haven't missed a single one, and those kids move at a glacial pace. It'd seem like a better idea if Sarah didn't feel two seconds away from vomiting every time she moves, but this is what she gets for letting Cosima talk her into things, even though she's never come away from a staff social without some sort of regret.  
  
(Paul, mostly. A little bit of vodka, one terrible Jäger incident, a game of Truth or Dare that ended in a near-concussion. In a list she wonders why she goes at all.)  
  
Maybe Alison has the right idea, staying back to "ensure  _someone_  is there for the children." Not that the majority of them would willingly come to her in an emergency, but still, when Sarah leaves her girls sleeping it does make her feel a little better knowing Alison's awake on her cabin porch, waiting for trouble. She's probably the only counselor that adheres to the job description, Sarah'll give her that. As for the rest of it...  
  
Well. At least there's someone in Beth's court. Sarah can't say she blames her for caring, even if it is as aggressively as she does.  
  
"You said ten minutes," Madeleine says as she pops her head into Sarah's room.  
  
Sarah rubs her cheeks and tries to look awake. "Yeah?"  
  
Madeleine frowns, her expression that of a middle-aged mother. Scarily close to Mrs. S, actually. "Well it's been twelve," she says. "I thought you might want to know, in case you actually wanted to get there."  
  
"Shi- uh, yeah, thanks," Sarah mutters, heaving herself off her bed, herding Madeleine back out into the cabin. "Yeah, all right, everybody at the door in thirty seconds or we're staying after breakfast to help the kitchen staff clean!"  
  
Ava and the cousins are at the door before Sarah finishes talking, eager to get going, and Sameera and Madeleine line up with relief, but the rest of the girls share horrified looks as they rush to finish ponytails (or in Quinn's case put on a shirt) and generally get their shit together. Sarah frowns at the clock like she's actually counting.  
  
"It's all grease," Madeleine's saying from her spot by the door. "The whole kitchen,  _grease_. I am not-"  
  
"Okay, chill," Quinn snaps as she rushes over. Raya and Sophia stumble after her, both bleary-eyed and grimacing.  
  
"Naomi, Daniela," Sarah warns the remaining two girls.  
  
Daniela looks up in a panic, bobby pins in her mouth as she tries to finish her bun. Naomi rolls her eyes but drops the hair straightener, yanking the plug out like it's some great effort, clearly as much a morning person as Sarah is.  
  
And shit, she's still in her pyjama pants. Oh well. It's not like there's anyone to impress here, and after catching Rachel smoking last night the girl can't really say anything against her.  
  
"Okay let's  _go_ ," Madeleine urges as the last two girls get in line.  
  
Sarah takes one last look at the utter chaos of clothes and towels left strewn about (they'll clearly need to come back to this before bunk inspections) and herds them out the door. Only five minutes behind schedule, which, in Sarah's books, is her biggest accomplishment all year.

 

* * *

  
  
They make it before the flag actually goes up, joining the eight and nine year-old boys, Delphine's six year-olds, and Alison's little robots. Somehow in Alison's hands the eight year-olds are always obedient. It'd be impressive if it wasn't so scary.  
  
Sarah doesn't know why she expected Rachel to be here, other than the quiet in her half of the cabin while Sarah was getting her girls ready. It isn't as if Rachel's been a model counselor this far and a flag raising doesn't really seem like her deal, but still, standing in a crappy semi-circle with the other campers Sarah can't help finding Rachel's absence noticeable. Maybe it's that everything last night still feels so unfinished.  
  
She's thought about just talking with her, spending way too long last night when she should've been sleeping mulling it over, but it isn't as if there's anything  _to_  talk about – not when she actually gets down to it. Sure, she could give her back her cigarettes. But that'd be admitting a sort of defeat she isn't ready to give. And maybe Rachel isn't even expecting her to; she did let go of the pack with ease.  
  
Maybe she wanted to be caught, then. Wanted someone to find her smoking in the woods. Sarah wouldn't put it past her.  
  
If there's one thing Sarah understands it's the need for your own shittiness to be recognized. Not necessarily called out, but just... seen. And it might be totally different for Rachel, different intentions or different desires, but there was still a look in her eyes when Sarah approached that she hasn't been able to shake – this soft, unguarded  _need_. So Sarah left. Went back to her cabin, crept through the quiet bunks, pulled her covers up to her chin in the dark to try and forget it. She didn't even realize Rachel's cigarettes were still in her pocket until she tried to roll over.  
  
"You're not exactly the type I'd expect to run into here," Delphine says to her as the kids are singing, suddenly beside her in a way that would be startling if Sarah had any energy to care.  
  
She lifts her shoulders, grateful for the overcast sky. "You know, thought I'd give it a go or something. For the kids."  
  
Delphine raises an eyebrow and glances at Sarah's half-miserable group but nods.  
  
"Did something happen last night, after we left?" she asks.  
  
Fucking Paul, Sarah almost says, but stops herself. That's not really it at all anyway. "Nah," she says. "Krystal got drunk, I headed back. I- uh, I'm not feeling too hot this morning, though."  
  
She doesn't know why she was about to tell her about Rachel. She doesn't know why she stopped herself either.  
  
Delphine feels her forehead with the back of her hand, frowning in concern and then smoothing back her messy hair. "You're a little warm, maybe a bug?"  
  
"Yeah, I kinda thought it was a hangover, but-"  _but I didn't even drink that much_. Yeah, a bug would definitely make sense. Her stomach rolls and she brings a hand to her lips to quell the nausea. These kids  _are_  walking germ factories.  
  
"Maybe you should see the nurse later," Delphine suggests, glancing back at her kids as the song ends.  
  
They're about half the size of everyone else here but were singing just as loud, equally off-key, and there's a definite perk to working with the little kids. Literally everything they do is ten times cuter.  
  
The director's grinning and thanking everyone for joining him this morning, as if this is some privilege to stand out with the morning dew and watch a flag be pulled up a pole, and within seconds Alison has her girls lined up with partners and ready to head back to their cabin before breakfast. Delphine gives Sarah's shoulder a soft squeeze before heading back to her sixes and Sarah finds herself staring blankly at her own girls before Quinn's yanking on her arm.  
  
"Can we go back to sleep now?" she asks, dragging Sarah so they're facing the direction of the cabins. "We have like, fifteen minutes until breakfast, right?"  
  
Alison's already halfway down the path with her girls and Seth and Rudy are close behind, the three groups no doubt heading back to clean up for bunk inspections later. Sarah wonders if dust even exists in Alison's cabin.  
  
"God, I wish," Sarah says to Quinn. And then to her girls, "No, we'd better go back and clean. Wouldn't want demerit points before the first week's even over."  
  
"I want that friggin' trophy," Madeleine mutters as she tugs Raya and Zohal into the start of a line.  
  
Sarah snorts. "Well good luck with Alison's group still alive."  
  
She feels bad for a second, realizing Alison didn't even give her a dirty look this morning and seemed almost, briefly, impressed that Sarah managed to show up. But it passes as she remembers Alison has never lost the camp-wide competition and also never lets anyone forget. It isn't as if she has much in the way of actual competition, with no one else really willing to volunteer for extra crap just for points. And yet her victory dance is still insulting.  
  
Sameera thinks about it for a second, digging her heel into the dirt. "Well, what if we cleaned the mess hall?"  
  
Sarah has never seen a dirtier look than the one Madeleine shoots her. She tries to conceal her laugh as a cough but ends up just turning away, trying hard not to catch Quinn's eye. It takes her a good moment before she can face her group again and even then Madeleine's silent outrage has her suppressing a giggle.  
  
Delphine waves at them as she passes with the six year-olds, who all stare up in awe at the older girls and seem even tinier in a line behind Delphine. "Don't forget to check in with the nurse later," Delphine calls out.  
  
Quinn immediately drops Sarah's arm. "You're  _sick_?"  
  
"Oh good god," Madeleine says as she takes a giant step back.  
  
Sarah shuts her eyes, suddenly realizing that if she is sick, it probably won't be long before the entire cabin gets it. And there is nothing she wants less than to be near any of these whiney little buggers when they're fighting something. As soon as she drops them off at the mess hall, she's getting herself a surgical mask and as many Lysol wipes as she can find.

 

* * *

  
  
It's definitely something. Those are the nurse's words after reading the thermometer, mentioning how stuff always passes around camps. Rest and fluids, she advises Sarah, but she does give her a surgical mask after laughing, and despite the waves of dizziness that keep coming Sarah heads back to the mess hall to at least put  _something_  in her stomach. Coffee, probably. But at least it'll do its job.  
  
About a third of the room stares at her as she walks in, no doubt at the mask and pyjama pants. She can see Delphine saying something to a stunned Cosima, likely explaining, and Paul looks like he wants to come over but thankfully stays where he is.  
  
"We made a spot for you by yourself," Quinn says when Sarah gets to their table, pointing at the empty no man's land between her group and Rachel's where napkins and condiments are stored.  
  
By 'made' she means shoved a napkin dispenser aside, but it seems to be far enough away from the kids that they're okay with her sitting down, so she doesn't really mind. Getting to sit at all is a relief from the feeling that she's floating upside-down. She considers resting her head on the table for at least a little bit, but it's one of those humid days where the varnish on the wood has regained its tackiness and she'd rather not have to peel her face off the surface. Her elbows sticking is bad enough.  
  
Madeleine nudges a coffee down the table until it rests close enough for Sarah to grab, an act of thoughtfulness that has a lump growing in her throat.  
  
"God, thank-you," she says, trying to keep her eyes from tearing up.  
  
Madeleine makes a sort of panicked face at the emotion in her voice and says, "uh, Delphine suggested it. It wasn't my idea."  
  
"Still," Sarah says. "I appreciate it."  
  
The coffee's lukewarm, but it's terrible on the best of days so a temperature change isn't going to ruin it.  
  
Quinn crinkles her nose from where she sits, the closest to Sarah but far enough away to signify she doesn't want her germs. "Coffee's disgusting. I don't know why you love it so much."  
  
"Adults need it," Naomi says in a bored tone, picking at her eggs. "It's like a life source for them, or something. Or at least that's what my dad says."  
  
Quinn laughs. "Sarah's not an adult."  
  
"Yes she is," Ava argues, rising from her seat a little. Afsheen pulls her back down. "She's a lot older than  _you_."  
  
Sarah feebly raises her head to interject, but Quinn's already talking before she can find the energy to put words together. She might as well just go to sleep right here with how much she's contributing to the morning.  
  
"Okay, but adults have, like, responsibilities and stuff. And no offence," Quinn adds, looking pointedly at Sarah's pyjamas, "but they wear actual clothes."  
  
Sarah can hear Rachel's cold chuckle from the other end of the table. Any other day she'd invite her to share but the thought of turning her head in any direction has her wanting to lie down. Probably not a good sign for their upcoming soccer session. Maybe she can sneak in a quick nap on the bleachers.  
  
She rests the side of her face against the cool wood of the table before she has time to think about the varnish, just needing to chill for a second, hoping she can somehow inhale the caffeine from her coffee because there's no way she's lifting her head or mask to drink.  
  
"Sarah..."  
  
Her eyes aren't shut, but all she can see is the bottom corner of a ketchup bottle. She recognizes Naomi's voice though and makes a noise to signify she heard her.  
  
"Uh, Paul's here," Naomi says, just as Sarah catches on to someone standing beside her.  
  
With great effort she unsticks her face from the table and sits upright again. The smirk she's expecting from Paul turns out to be a look of concern, and she has to hope Alison's not watching this interaction from her table with a butter knife in her hand. It would be just like her to take some great personal offense at Paul caring. (Especially, Sarah considers, when Paul doesn't seem to care that Beth's been in a fog for well over a year.)  
  
"Yeah, what," she mutters.  
  
His eyes are fixed on the surgical mask and his usual cockiness is nonexistent, which is almost more unsettling than feeling all her girls watching this interaction with great interest. If they're all focused on her then Rachel probably is as well, somehow always in tune with what's happening at Sarah's half of the table, staring every time Sarah's thought to look over like she just  _knows_.  
  
Paul clears his throat. "I just thought, seeing as you're, uh, not feeling too hot, you might want to leave your girls with me this morning so you could try to sleep it off. We're doing some art and then soccer, so with the specialists the ratio isn't... you know..."  
  
She'd rather not even leave her trash with him, but the sheer exhaustion dragging down her body is enough for her to accept. "If you lose a single kid I'll cut you," she warns, grudgingly giving him a grateful smile.  
  
"I'm doing a drama thing with Alison this afternoon. A flesh wound sounds like a good enough reason to ditch, don't you think?" He gives her that stupid shining smile of his, the one she hates to admit sucked her in last year when she didn't know any better.  
  
"Well in that case feel free to lose Quinn," she says, snorting at Quinn's indignant  _hey_.  
  
Paul laughs and takes a good look at her group as if trying to predict what kind of mistake he's just made. Naomi's smiling, at least. No doubt eager to see her brother. The rest of them seem as trustful of Paul as Sarah usually is, and maybe she's a terrible counselor for abandoning them to take a nap but she'd like to think this is what Delphine would choose in this situation as well and Delphine doesn't seem to do anything wrong.  
  
"Just be good to them," she tells him.  
  
He promises, but when she's finally back in her bed with the flimsy curtain drawn across her window she has to try really hard to believe she made the right choice. At least if anything goes wrong she can blame it on the fever.

 

* * *

  
  
Her kids bounce back into the cabin just before lunch, Quinn kicking in the door then holding her t-shirt over her face to come check on Sarah. The rest of the kids hover behind her just outside the doorway for a minute and then disperse, a few of them with some god-awful popsicle stick craft that could either be a bird house or an exercise in glue. It makes Sarah feel a little better that the art specialist doesn't seem to be putting that much effort into this year either.  
  
"So are you still hella contagious?" Quinn asks as she creeps closer.  
  
She pauses to examine a photo Sarah has propped up on the one tiny shelf, of her and Felix in matching Halloween costumes. It was the last year she was able to trick-or-treat and their first year in Canada and he'd made her go as a bloody Ninja Turtle, not even the good one, and the whole night adults asked where the rest of their group was.  _Just us¸_  she said at every house.  _Just the two of us_.  
  
"Probably," Sarah says, sitting upright and trying to smooth down what she imagines to be Medusa-levels of hair. "But I'm feeling a bit better. Is Paul still here?"

Quinn's frowning, still staring at the photo. "No, Rachel brought us back. Is this you?"  
  
Sarah resists the urge to ask who else it could be, given that this is her room and she's not in the habit of collecting other people's childhood photos, and makes a small noise of confirmation, trying not to wonder if Rachel volunteered or if Paul just assumed she would and she had no way out. Did she say anything to the girls? Did Quinn give her a hard time?  
  
"How old were you?" Quinn asks. She's dropped the t-shirt from her face but is still keeping her distance like Sarah could cough and doom her at any second.  
  
"Twelve," Sarah says. "That's my brother, my foster brother."  
  
She throws off her blanket and sets about finding an actual pair of shorts to wear, not wanting another repeat of this morning's mess hall entrance when she brings the girls for lunch. It's tempting to grab the one pair of sweats she brought and lounge for the rest of the day but the humidity has definitely made itself known and she'd rather not sit in a pile of her own sweat.  
  
"I didn't know you had a brother," Quinn says as she moves towards the dresser, catching sight of a photo booth strip tucked into the mirror. It's Sarah and Felix and a couple pairs of retro sunglasses and Quinn takes her time, examining each photo like they might hold some sort of secret. "So do you guys not have parents?"  
  
Sarah freezes in the middle of trying to pull a pair of denim cutoffs out of her suitcase, frowning at the back of Quinn's head. "Well, we have a foster mum, Mrs. S. But before that it was... a lot of bouncing around homes. She was the first one to want either of us, really."  
  
There's a beat and then Quinn turns around, her face a soft expression Sarah hasn't seen before. She seems to forget about Sarah's contagion for a minute as she steps towards the bed, taking a seat next to Sarah, curling her hands in the tangle of sheets.  
  
"So you were pretty lonely, then?" Quinn asks in a quiet voice.  
  
Sarah's grip relaxes on the cutoffs and they fall back against the opening of the suitcase, caught in the zipper. "Yeah, you know, I was. And- angry, too. For a long time."  
  
Quinn nods, eyes fixed on her lap. Sarah wishes she had something to say that wouldn't send this conversation into an after-school special and probably ruin any chance she had at building Quinn's trust, knowing how quickly this openness is likely to go. Quinn's a lot like a wild animal that way, all teeth and snarl the moment she senses someone might be getting too close. Sarah used to be the same. (Maybe, secretly, still is.)  
  
"Are you still angry?" Quinn asks after a pause, collecting herself enough to start picking at the peeling veneer of the bedpost.  
  
Sarah can almost hear Mrs. S laughing at the question, telling the kid Sarah's made sure to hold onto her anger or something equally offensive and semi-true. Anything to remind Sarah she doesn't want to give up her angry punk kid gimmick because it's too easy to get what she wants that way. Too easy to excuse her own shitty behavior.  
  
Sarah would like to think she's grown up a little in the past two years, leaving at least some of that behind, but who knows. She still slept with Paul. She still can't apologize for it. There's a whole load of shit she'd rather write off as side effects of a troubled childhood.  
  
"Sometimes I am," she tells Quinn. "And I do stupid stuff because of it. But I'm trying to be better."  
  
She catches a glimpse of Naomi in the doorway out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns Naomi's gone and Quinn's heading back to the dresser to continue her snooping almost as if Sarah said nothing at all.  
  
"Is this old lady cream?" Quinn asks, holding up a bottle of moisturizer.  
  
Sarah smiles and rolls her eyes and unzips her suitcase wide enough to fully free her pair of shorts. "If it is, does that mean I'm an adult now?"  
  
Quinn helps herself to the moisturizer, giving it a sniff before rubbing it into her hands. It's lavender and Quinn crinkles her nose.  
  
"No," she says with a grimace. "Just that you have bad taste."  
  
Sarah laughs and heaves herself off the bed, shorts in hand, kicking Quinn out of her room so she can change before the lunch gong sounds. It isn't like they need the full hour to eat but Sarah would at least like to get them there before Cosima, who's essentially the camp late bell at this point with how consistent she is.  
  
Her girls are, thankfully, a little more agreeable than they were this morning, eager to share with her their stories of having to deal with the boys as she walks them over to the mess hall. It's a mix of disgust and veiled interest that makes Sarah glad to be done puberty and she makes a mental note to thank Paul for doing this with him being the one who had to oversee it all. Nothing worse than kids trying to handle their crushes.  
  
They slide into the lunch line just before Cosima's group. As Sarah grabs a tray she pretends she doesn't see Quinn smelling her hands again, a tiny smile on her lips.

 

* * *

  
  
Rachel heard about Sarah's illness at breakfast, when her campers filtered in without her and filled the other end of the table with incessant chatter about germs. Sarah joined them soon after in sleepwear and a surgical mask and despite the comical getup Rachel didn't think of the implications of sitting so close to Patient Zero until later, during some improv games in the rec hall when one of her children started to cough.  
  
She wasn't exactly thrilled to lead Sarah's group back to the cabins with any one of them now a carrier but also didn't fully feel comfortable letting Paul do it, even if Sarah gave him permission, considering his behavioral track record. And it is fully believable that Sarah's illness might be to blame for her lapse in judgment as well.  
  
Rachel's still displeased with her for last night, but the short conversation in which she informed Paul she'd be returning the kids to their cabin justified her decision. The glint in his eyes and the hand he let rest on her arm before she gave him a pointed look were enough for her to understand how someone as needy as Sarah could find herself fawning after him. Of course it did absolutely nothing for Rachel, but she would like to consider herself a bit more evolved than the likes of Sarah. She's sure Paul didn't have to work hard to win her over.  
  
Sarah's children seemed eager to share with her the details of Sarah being sick as if this was the only thing to happen to them at camp thus far, one of them voicing Rachel's concerns that this could be widespread if they aren't careful, and it isn't a fully unpleasant walk. Her girls being slightly older than Rachel's means they were of interest to Rachel's campers and in wanting to impress them their behavior was noticeably improved.  
  
If it weren't for Sarah being their counselor Rachel would consider merging the groups more often.  
  
She made her girls wash their hands as soon as she left the eleven year-olds at their door, not wanting to risk anything. Spending the summer passing whatever bug Sarah has between them is not Rachel's idea of a good time even if it would give her an excuse to keep her distance from the kids.  
  
(There was a momentary consideration to check in on Sarah but it was quashed by the reminder that Sarah still has her cigarettes. That she took them in the first place. And anyway, Rachel is not the type to care about anyone else's wellbeing, regardless of their proximity or inability to take care of themselves.)  
  
She sees Sarah at lunch, the mask still on her face but pyjamas gone and some semblance of order returning to her group. Rachel wasn't worried but it is nice to see a bit of color in Sarah's cheeks again.  
  
Her own children are as animated as ever today, making it less likely that any of them are battling whatever Sarah has, and for once Rachel doesn't find herself minding their lively conversations over the table. She'd been considering assigning spots for mealtime to cut down on the talking but at the very least they're distracted enough to forget their mission to interrogate Rachel for personal details about her life.  
  
_Do you have any pets at home? What's your favorite color? Do you have a boyfriend?  
  
_ One of them (Sahar) was at least asking because she wanted to make Rachel a friendship bracelet, which Rachel politely declined. But it seemed to set them off in their questioning and Rachel only has so many vague and impersonal answers to give.  
  
_My father owns birds. Silver. Aren't you too young to be concerning yourself with matters like that?  
  
_ "No, that's definitely not true," Clementine's saying now, about whatever no doubt idiotic thing Olivia just said. It's mostly been background noise as Rachel attempts to eat.  
  
Clementine looks to her for confirmation and she drops her spoon back into her soup as she tries not to sigh. Their belief that she pays attention to their conversations is turning out to be exhausting.  
  
"I'm afraid I wasn't listening," Rachel says, choosing to ignore the expression that passes over Clementine's face.  
  
It really isn't her problem if the child's parents didn't prepare her for the world. If she'd like people to pay attention, she needs to have something interesting to say. And, realistically, a name change. Rachel can't imagine anyone taking a woman named after a fruit seriously.  
  
"Eels," Olivia explains. She's poking at her soup with the crust of her grilled cheese as if there might be some lurking in the broth.  
  
Rachel blinks. "I'm still not sure what the question is."  
  
"If there's eels in the lake," Sierra says. "Olivia said her brother said there are eels in the lake in the deep part and if you flip your canoe out there they'll electrocute you."  
  
A few of the other girls share Sierra's anxious expression, no doubt concerned about their canoeing session later this afternoon. Rachel's tempted to perpetuate the rumor to not have to deal with them all flipping themselves on purpose. She doesn't know what it is about near-drowning experiences that kids seem to love so much but as soon as it requires her assistance it becomes her problem. And she really isn't about to dive into murky waters to save children who should know better.  
  
"Eels definitely only live in the ocean," Clementine argues, Raniyah nodding with her.  
  
Rachel sighs and rubs a finger under her eye, looking forward to quiet hour after this. "Eels can live in freshwater as well, which includes lakes." At the sight of her girls' faces she adds, "but I'm certain they don't live in  _this_  lake. It's more of a glorified pond if we'd like to get into specifics anyway."  
  
She doesn't mention that they aren't likely to encounter electric eels anywhere outside a zoo, not wanting to prolong this conversation. Besides, a small amount of fear is good for children. It keeps them alert.  
  
"I'm still not gonna dangle my toes in the water," Sahar says seriously, and Rachel gives her a fond smile.  
  
"That's a good idea," she says, "considering the size of the fish that live out there."  
  
It sends a decent round of alarm across her table and she lets them speculate on what kind of horrors lurk in the deep as she sets about finishing this sorry excuse of a soup. It might have been better with grilled cheese, but she'd rather not put that much grease in her stomach before an afternoon of water sports. The last thing she needs is to join Sarah in her sickness.  
  
Sarah's currently involved in some sort of tiresome conversation with her kids, looking about as thrilled to be eating as Rachel is, the mask pushed up over her nose to free her chapped lips. Catching herself staring, Rachel drops her gaze into her soup. No telling what Sarah might assume if she saw that.  
  
Nothing good, especially paired with the way she came at Rachel last night. Rachel's sure it was a combination of rum and the start of her illness but she still can't shake the image of Sarah advancing, cheeks flushed, that ash trapped in her mess of hair. The scent of the campfire combined with alcohol was so strong that Rachel swears she can still smell it, even here in the mess hall through all this grease and garlic. She hates that it's going to make her think of Sarah from now on. Hates that Sarah's even a thought in her head.  
  
"Can we play outside after lunch?" Marlow asks her, auburn hair falling out of the braid that Rachel regrettably had to help her with this morning.  
  
Rachel frowns. "And do what?"  
  
She pictures them all sitting in the sun at the picnic table, voices much too loud for quiet hour as they do exactly as they are now but without food to occupy them. It sounds like a recipe for boredom. Rachel's never had time for that.  
  
"We're playing a game in the trees," she says, looking over to the Isabellas and Sahar. "We're all orphans in this little house and we have to gather our own food and there's this witch-"  
  
"That's you," Olivia interrupts, and of course it is.  
  
Rachel glances upwards at the beams for a moment and exhales.  
  
Sahar looks at her nervously, awaiting a reaction that she seems to think will be anger. If it were any other child Rachel would follow through but she finds herself oddly fond of Sahar in an almost embarrassing way. She's nothing like Rachel was as a child but there's still something impressive about her, the way she carries herself with ease.  
  
"Well it is a lovely day," Rachel says finally. "We might as well enjoy it outside."  
  
A few of the girls let out a little cheer and Marlow thanks her with a big grin but Rachel focuses on Sahar, who reaches out with a small hand and just rests her fingers on Rachel's wrist. Almost as if she's fond of Rachel as well.

 

* * *

  
  
Rachel realizes her mistake five minutes into quiet hour when Sarah's brood comes tumbling out of their cabin to join them outside. They bring cards and skipping ropes and drawing materials with them, and Sarah folds herself up on the other picnic table with a few children who seem more interested in Sarah than the card game she's attempting to show them.  
  
Rachel has the picnic table to herself, Evie drifting back every five minutes to complain about the heat but not staying long enough for Rachel to yank the hair out of her mouth. With the way their small grassy area is set up Rachel finds herself facing Sarah, the two mirror images of each other – Sarah with an audience, Rachel noticeably alone. It's what she wants; still, watching Sarah's face light up behind the mask she feels a twinge somewhere deep in her chest.  
  
Two of the girls around her Rachel recognizes: Quinn is unforgettable, her hands snaking through Sarah's hair as if she's forgotten she's contagious. The helpful one – Madeleine, she believes – is testing all the markers on a scrap piece of paper. Rachel sees promise in her.  
  
If the circumstances were different (i.e., if Sarah wasn't Sarah) Rachel might consider joining them, taking up whatever card game Sarah seems to be laying out on the table and having something to do other than sit here for the next fifty minutes. She should have brought her book. She intended to, but it's sitting inside on her pristinely-made bed and she's not about to ask Sarah to watch her kids to go get it.  
  
Her kids are mostly in the scattering of trees nearby, anyway. There's a particularly bent tree that seems to be the doorway to the house, which is the underside of an enormous pine tree. The twigs and pinecones in the surrounding area act as provisions and she's already tired of watching the girls scurry around to collect them.  
  
In and out of the trees. In and out of the trees. Moving like insects in the shade, which is, she supposes, why they have any energy at all; they aren't trapped in the full sun because of an error in seating choice.  
  
The front steps to the porch are looking pretty good right now.  
  
"Evie," she calls over, attracting Sarah's attention for a flash. She pretends she doesn't see it but surreptitiously runs a hand down the front of her shirt nonetheless.  
  
Evie for once doesn't have hair in her mouth but bumbles over in that irritating spud-like way of hers and Rachel questions why she picked this one.  
  
"Yeah?" Evie says, leaning her middle into the edge of the picnic table.  
  
Rachel ignores the crass reply, reminding herself she isn't here to teach etiquette. If she was every last child would know how to pick up after themselves and not speak unless spoken to. "Can you fetch something for me?" she asks.  
  
Evie perks up, interested. "Inside?"  
  
"In my room," Rachel says. "There's a book on my bed, I'd like you to bring it to me. Can you do that?"  
  
It's like instructing an eager puppy the way Evie nods, bouncing on her toes. Rachel gives her a tiny wave to send her over and she takes off like Rachel's counting the seconds. She assumes it's less than two minutes but without glancing at her watch she can't say. Still, Evie returns promptly with the book and only frowns at the cover for a second before handing it over.  
  
"What's it about?" she asks.  
  
It's  _Camus_ , she nearly snaps.  
  
"Absurdism," she says instead. "Morality."  
  
Evie makes a face as she palms a crack in the table. "I don't know what that means."  
  
"Oh, I'm aware." Rachel presses her lips together.  
  
There's a beat where Evie takes one more strange look at the cover and then she's shrugging and running back off into the trees, reminding Rachel that she's still the witch even if she says she's not playing. "You just have to sit there and be scary," she calls back, and Sarah laughs from her picnic table.  
  
_She's already mastered that_ , Rachel imagines her saying.  
  
But no, maybe Sarah doesn't see her as something to be feared. The thought clenches tight in her stomach and she opens her book to the dog-eared page to get rid of it.  
  
She gets about half a page in before she finds herself distracted by the soft conversation Sarah's having with her girls, as if trying to keep it at the table. Apparently the girls jumping rope in the grass and practicing their cartwheels don't merit the information.  
  
"He's thirteen," Sarah's saying. "So no, not my twin."  
  
Rachel glances up from the sentence she's still trying to read to see an almost pained expression on Sarah's face, staring hard at the cards in her hand. The game seem to be all but abandoned but Sarah doesn't give.  
  
The girl beside Sarah, another quiet one, with honey-colored hair lighter than her skin, eyes her with what looks to be disappointment. If Rachel remembers correctly this is the girl whose brother is in Paul's group and made sure to mention it as Rachel was walking them back.  
  
"I do have a twin sister though," Sarah says, off the disappointment. It lights up the girl's eyes and Sarah seems to sink deeper into the table. "But she doesn't live with me."  
  
"Why not?" the girl asks.  
  
It seems deeply personal and Rachel nearly tells her off for asking when Sarah clearly doesn't want to share. But then Sarah doesn't even have a response, and Rachel feels like reprimanding her for answering any of their questions to begin with. Children do just fine with their imaginations; no need to hand them anything concrete. Anything that could stain.  
  
"They don't have parents," Quinn says, eager to share that she knows something the other girls don't. Rachel frowns at the back of her head.  
  
Madeleine looks like she might clamp a hand over Quinn's mouth and then whips her head to see if Sarah's upset but Sarah just gives them a little smile, lifting her shoulders as if this is all some humorless joke.  
  
"Why not?" the other girl asks again, sounding more concerned than the first time.  
  
Rachel nearly shuts her book but then realizes she might need something to pretend to do if Sarah happens to glance her way. She has no problem with eavesdropping but getting caught is just shameful.  
  
"I have a foster mum," Sarah says somewhat forcefully. "Felix and I live with her."  
  
"Where does your twin live?" Quinn asks and props herself up on her elbows, very much more interested in this conversation than the cards she'd been attempting to build with.  
  
"Somewhere safe," Sarah says. It sounds wistful through the mask.  
  
She catches Rachel's eye accidentally, but there isn't anything but a sort of dulled resignation in her expression. Something eerily similar to Beth and Rachel quickly drops her gaze to get rid of the thought. Sarah is nothing like Beth. Or, Beth is nothing like Sarah.  
  
The girls are moving on to their next line of interrogation, led by Madeleine to what seems to be every child's curiosity this week – if she has a boyfriend or if she's in love.  
  
Rachel jabs her finger under the sentence she's determined to read thoroughly this time and does her best not to hear Sarah's laugh and  _no, no boys in my life anymore_  as she focuses everything on the printed words. One by one. Until she can string them together and they form a line and she still has no idea what they say because Quinn's asking about Paul and Rachel wants to toss her book at the girl's head.  
  
_Paul_  is not something Sarah would ever let herself love. Rachel knows this with every fiber of her being.  
  
You should know about Beth, she silently reprimands the children. They've been here how long and aren't aware or have forgotten that Paul is supposed to love his girlfriend? But everyone's seen the way he continues to look at Sarah, and Rachel finds her fingernails leaving marks on her palm before she can stop herself.  
  
Of course those two would find each other. Likeminded individuals and Rachel doesn't know why she thought she'd be kind and return Sarah's kids for her. Why she'd bother to keep Paul away when Sarah eagerly handed them over to him in the first place.  
  
"You really look like the witch now," Evie says, suddenly appearing at Rachel's side.  
  
So there is a price to bitterness. No, she scratches the word from her mind.  _Bitter_  is for someone who cares about either party. She's  _bored_. Bored of the two of them. Bored of Sarah.  
  
"You could come chase us if you want," Evie suggests.  
  
Her hand goes to grab a piece of hair and without thinking Rachel taps it away.  
  
"Or I could simply eat you," she says, and she doesn't even need to pretend to lunge for Evie to run screaming back into the trees, the joy and terror clear on her face.  
  
All her girls watch her from between the branches with the best mix of fear and awe and Rachel considers it a personal victory, to have excelled so well in her role as their summer villain. If they need her to strike them down later she will do so with gusto. Anything but care for them. Anything but let them believe adults will be there when it matters.  
  
"Blue and black," Sarah's saying decisively, over at the once again pleasant table, holding her wrist out for Madeleine to measure with her fingers.  
  
Rachel knows it's for a request to make a bracelet but in her head it just sounds like  _bruise_.

 

* * *

  
  
It was someone's bright idea to have a karaoke night after dinner with a group of children who so desperately need vocal lessons Rachel half expects the large windowpanes to shatter, but for some reason none of them seem to notice and eagerly form group after group to plan out performances. The list of songs available ranges from current radio hits to songs Rachel's parents used to listen to, all typed up in a great yellow binder that passes from group to group, each of them eager to find something they know. It mostly ends up being pop songs and the hell from the latest Disney movie. Rachel regrets not bringing earplugs.  
  
There are a handful of children who are much more interested in bracelet-making than being in front of an audience and this is where Rachel sits, in a group at the back of the room, surrounded by embroidery thread and surprisingly next to Sarah's French friend Delphine in the other uncomfortable plastic chair. It wasn't planned on either of their parts but they're both too polite to move and Rachel's just waiting for her to initiate what will be their first conversation this summer.  
  
She did ask her, the one day of orientation she attended, where to find the director's office, but it was with as little words as possible on both their parts and not at all memorable. Just as Rachel likes it.  
  
Delphine seems to have more of a reason to be here than Rachel, with it mostly being younger kids opting to make bracelets instead of perform. But Rachel sat down first and this is where she hoped to attract the least amount of attention and she's not getting up now. Not when Sarah and Cosima are occupying the only other safe space in the room, in the corner with the filing cabinets, away from Alison and Paul and any children who might ask them to sing.  
  
Sierra seemed to be angling for Rachel to join her and Raniyah up on "stage" (a couple raised platforms shoved together at the front of the hall) while they all walked over but Rachel shot that down as quickly as possible. There is no way in hell she'd ever submit herself to that kind of torture.  
  
"So are you enjoying your time here so far?" Delphine sounds uninterested in her own words, clearly wanting this conversation to happen as much as Rachel.  
  
It was an inevitability with the proximity of their chairs but Rachel still feels like letting her know they don't have to do this; they can sit in silence and suffer through another rendition of  _Let It Go_  by children who should be nowhere near a microphone and not be bound by social pleasantries. At the very least they don't have to pretend to care.  
  
"It's been... informative," Rachel says, examining her nails.  
  
Informative of exactly why adults don't willingly subject themselves to children on a daily basis unless they absolutely must. Also why Rachel's parents never took her camping as a child; there is entirely too much dirt and too many insects and her mother wouldn't have lasted one second in the wilderness.  
  
Delphine laughs, almost a quiet scoff. "Sounds like someone who wants to be here," she says.  
  
She's surely already heard everything Sarah and Cosima have to say about Rachel, no doubt had a good laugh about it as well. Rachel doesn't know why she'd want to prolong this conversation if not to garner more material to laugh about later, as she sure they've done with Alison and likely whichever counselor Rachel replaced.  
  
It stings slightly, but Rachel would probably do the same if she had anyone to laugh with.  
  
"Well it wasn't exactly my idea to apply," she tells Delphine, maintaining an even tone.  
  
Delphine nods but doesn't seem surprised. "This is why you aren't here to make friends?"  
  
Rachel's stomach muscles contract. Of course.  
  
There's a slight smile on Delphine's lips that if she weren't annoyed at her own words being tossed back at her like a joke she might admit to finding attractive, knowing that in the category of aesthetically-pleasing counselors Delphine is in the top two. (She won't let herself think about who the other one is. There is a purposely blank spot in her mind for that.)  
  
Delphine is looking at her like she's figured out why Rachel keeps herself so removed from everyone else and while frustrating, Rachel also feels as if it's lacking the usual judgment that comes with it.  
  
"It really isn't my ideal crowd," Rachel says anyway, needing to put out some excuse.  
  
She notices a chip in her nail polish in tandem with Delphine making a small sound in response and when she glances over Delphine has her eyebrow raised as if she sees right through her.  
  
_Do you have a crowd at all_? she seems to be asking.  
  
Rachel swallows; covers the chipped silver paint with her thumb.  _Of course_ , she tries to reply.  _Of course there are people who care about me_.  
  
They lose their conversation as one of the younger kids comes at Delphine with a terribly knotted up attempt at a bracelet and tears in her eyes and Delphine immediately sets about making it right, smoothing the child's hair back with a caring hand. Rachel wonders how long it took her to learn to react all soft like that or if she's just one of those strange people who was born knowing.  
  
Like Sarah.  
  
Who currently has Cosima's hand between her own, playing with her fingers as if they're water.  
  
At least when Cosima catches Sarah's bug Rachel will have no reason to be close enough to worry about catching it from her. It's a wonder half the camp isn't sick already with Sarah's inability to isolate herself.  
  
That's something Rachel could teach her; how to detach completely. And maybe then her children wouldn't feel entitled to answers about her mosaic of a family.  
  
Rachel congratulates herself on her own girls not knowing a thing about her. If she can make it through the summer relatively intact, it will be a personal triumph.

 

* * *

  
  
There's a welcome crispness to the air that night, settling in just as Rachel is putting her girls to bed. All of them, including Isabella W., opt for pyjama pants instead of sleep shorts, and even Rachel considers changing into something slightly warmer than the cargo shorts she's wearing for the half hour of reading she'll do before going to sleep as well.  
  
The nightly schedules aren't as terrible as she'd anticipated before the summer started. The girls seem happy, for the most part, to get to rest after their busy days, and the conversations that continue past lights out only manage to last for ten to fifteen minutes before they're all asleep. Of course she has had the odd child wake up again, a few nightmares that had someone opening her door in the middle of the night. She's grateful she thought to buy camp-appropriate sleepwear instead of bringing what she had at home.  
  
They seem especially tired tonight, after the canoe trip; it was nearly two hours of battling the current and more complaining than she's heard thus far and she admits to considering flipping her own canoe just to not have to paddle anymore. That would have had the added bonus of taking Sierra and Olivia with her and she almost regrets opting to stay dry.  
  
"Rachel, you should tell us a story," Evie requests from her top bunk, lifting her head up so she can look where Rachel's monitoring from the wall by her doorway.  
  
A few other heads pop up as well, Isabella C. and Julisa, and from the bunk under Marlow Sahar nods with a little smile. They're  _ten_ ; Rachel can't believe they'd still require such a crutch before bed. But there's a low murmur of interest across the cabin and Rachel frowns.  
  
"I'm afraid I don't have any storybooks with me," she says, ready to disappear into her room at the end of this conversation.  
  
Isabella C. props herself up on her elbows. "That's okay, you can just tell us one of yours."  
  
"Or read from your book," Sahar suggests.  
  
Rachel briefly dissects her childhood into what might be a) appropriate and b) interesting to children and surmises that they might be better off with Camus. No use telling them of forced independence and the preference her father had for his birds.  _My Rachel_ , he'd call her, but it still sounded less sweet than his voice for his pets.  
  
"It won't be very interesting," she tells them, but they say it doesn't matter.  
  
She dips into her room to grab her book and returns with a chill snaking its way up her throat, her fingers suddenly sore, remembering very strongly of her father making her read aloud at the bottom of the stairs so he could hear her at the top.  _Speak clearly, Rachel. Stand up straight_.  
  
The sea of faces looking at her now aren't her father but she doesn't know how to tell her body.  
  
"I'll read you the myth," she says, thumbing through the pages. "Do you all know what a myth is?"  
  
She recalls being taught about some Greek mythology in the fifth grade a few years after her father started drilling it into her, but the education system might have changed in the past decade or so.  
  
"We learned about Pandora in school," Marlow says.  
  
Raniyah brushes her hair out of her face with a frown and says, "and Hercules, like the Disney movie."  
  
"Well, good," Rachel says, choosing to lean against a dresser instead of stand up straight. Still, she can't shake the habit of holding her book out in front of her, arms bent at the proper angles. Strange how only bits of childhood seem to stick.  
  
"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight," she begins. A few girls settle into their beds but Sahar remains watching her. "They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."  
  
She continues to read with a slight warmth in her voice, amused by the way they try to follow along despite a good chunk of the words being entirely new to them.  
  
It feels, she admits to herself, similar to when her father would read to her as a child, knelt by her bed with a mug of tea on her bedside table. He only chose books he felt like reading again, never the picture books that lined her painted shelves. But she always did her best to understand. She'd assumed he treasured those moments as much as she did but over the past handful of years she's come to question it; come to question everything about her own childhood.  
  
Most of the girls are asleep by Camus's discussion of the return down the mountain, missing one of Rachel's favorite lines.  _If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious_. She has it underlined in a soft pencil and savors the way it sounds on her tongue.  
  
She's sure she's lost the remaining girls entirely, who watch her with sleepy eyes from their bunks, but it still feels good to read; to speak the words out loud and watch as they tug her girls into their dreams. Surely her father enjoyed this too. Why else would he return night after night?  
  
There is only one child awake by the time Rachel gets to the last paragraph.  
  
She approaches Sahar's bottom bunk fluidly, coming to kneel by the side of her bed. Sahar has sweet creases in her cheek from her pillow and trains her eyes on Rachel's lips.  
  
_I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain_ , Rachel reads.  _One always finds one's burden again.  
  
__But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He, too, concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world_.  
  
Sahar slips her hand over her sleeping bag to reach out for Rachel's, just knocking their knuckles together softly in a gesture that pulls something in Rachel's chest. She reads the last two lines with a little more purpose, her spine aching.  
  
_The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart_ , she tells her.  _One must imagine Sisyphus happy.  
  
_ A silence fills the cabin that has Rachel acutely aware of her crouched position on the floor and she wants to stand up but finds herself instead smoothing back Sahar's dark hair.  _Do you understand?_  she wants to ask her. But it sounds too much like her father and she leaves it at that.  
  
Smiles, wishes her sweet dreams, stands up to the creaking of her bones. Sahar falls asleep within minutes and Rachel shuts the lights off to leave the main room in darkness.  
  
She retreats to her bedroom after a moment's reflection to continue reading; the book is filled with two different sets of underlines, her father's faded handwriting in the margins, and it lulls her into a dreamlike state of her own for a good while. It's only as the alarm on her phone buzzes quietly beside her (she likes to read for a full half hour, no less) that she realizes there's a voice coming from outside, through the screen door, and finds herself needing to investigate.  
  
The floorboards creak as she tries to tiptoe across the cabin, tightening her robe around her midsection. She's thankful her girls are heavy sleepers but then almost wishes there was someone else awake to act as a witness – because out on the porch steps, hair tangled with moonlight, sits Sarah in her rolled-down black sweatpants.  
  
Rachel presses her fingers against the screen and monitors her breathing, not wanting to alert the girl to her presence despite Sarah being submerged in a phone conversation and not likely to look behind her.  
  
It's a relaxed voice, the one she's using, as if whoever she's talking to knows exactly how to release her stress. Even with the sullen tone she still sounds... happy.  
  
"I don't know, Fe," she's saying. A hand comes up to brush back her hair and then drops down to her side. "I'm just tired of all of it, and there's still-"  
  
Rachel can't hear even the lowest murmuring from the phone so she can't even try to decipher the interruption from its tone. Years of listening to her parents' phone calls doesn't seem to be helping her very much.  
  
"But it's not just Paul," Sarah says and then pauses to listen. "God, no. No, Vic isn't even an issue at this point; don't worry. You know I can hold my own."  
  
There's a history of  _something_  here, and Rachel gathers that she must be talking to her brother, who she mentioned earlier this afternoon. The ease with which they communicate has Rachel distantly wishing to share that sort of bond with someone, knowing she's not likely to call her father until the morning he's due to pick her up and none of her younger cousins have even written to her since she moved to Canada.  
  
"No, she doesn't even seem to care," Sarah says, answering some question Rachel wishes to have heard.  
  
_Who_  doesn't? She can't be talking about Rachel, but her skin pricks all the same, as if eight again and hearing her mother say  _she doesn't have a clue_  to a nameless friend while hiding under the stairs. So many pieces of her childhood she has no way to contextualize. Her fingers itch for a cigarette but she can't step out with Sarah already on the porch.  
  
"Just once," Sarah says. "I'm kinda hiding from her. Yeah, Alison. But I don't even know how to-"  
  
Her hand is at her face now, close to her mouth and Rachel imagines her picking at the skin of her lips as she listens.  
  
"Well they don't bloody well make a card for sleeping with someone's boyfriend, do they?" Sarah says rather harshly, then apologizes, then after a pause continues with, "But he's always  _there_. Even today, you know, when I went to nap... I could just hear him congratulating himself for having something on me. Kinda half expect him to ask me to- yeah."  
  
Rachel realizes her hand's in a fist, curled up so tight it hurts. As she unclenches her fingers she contemplates sneaking out her window to go find Paul and at the very least throw something at him. A rock, a chair.  
  
It's becoming clearer and clearer to her what role Sarah must have played in all of this last summer – and Beth for that matter, sitting sullenly to the side. Rachel knows about boys who think they deserve whatever they fancy simply for desiring it; she's spent years learning to fend them off but she knows for other girls it isn't so simple. They weren't raised with knives for tongues. They're too afraid to wound.  
  
_You have it in you to have said no, though_ , Rachel wants to tell Sarah.  
  
But she knows Sarah must have wanted it to happen, at least in the moment it did. And it fills her with anger to think that she'd be so stupid.  
  
She steps back from the door as Sarah rises, ending her phone call, and it's in this instant that she spies her cigarettes tucked into the pocket of Sarah's sweatpants, the plastic catching in the moonlight.  _Bitch_.  
  
Sarah doesn't go back to her cabin as Rachel expects but instead takes off down the path and through the trees, no doubt heading towards the lake. The darkness swallows her whole but Rachel finds herself watching the path where she disappeared for a while after; watching and expecting her to turn back at any moment, her own pillar of salt.  
  
You foolish girl, she tells her. You should have known so much better.

 

* * *

  
  
Sarah lights up a cigarette as she's rounding the path along the edge of the forest to the lake, having watched Vic do it a thousand times, inhaling sharply as the flame catches – startled by the way her lungs scratch.  
  
She hadn't exactly been serious about smoking Rachel's cigarettes when she took them from her but between her immune system shutting down and Paul catching her after karaoke  _right in front of Alison_  she decided it might help. It's a great stress reliever, she's heard. She usually goes for orgasms herself but seeing as that's obviously not going to happen at camp she decided to have a go at being Rachel Duncan.  
  
It... tastes like shite. Rachel must not kiss a lot of people if this is what her mouth tastes like.  
  
She stumbles in the sand half at the intrusive thought and half at the figure sitting on the boathouse dock, looking out across the moonlit water. They've clearly heard her already with what a beast she's been crashing through the trees so there's no point in turning back but as she gets closer she makes out Beth's bun, and her pale legs, and everything about this feels sickly.  
  
She finds herself clunking onto the dock anyway, coming to a stop a few feet away from Beth and sitting with her sad little cigarette.  
  
A whole fucking lake and she finds the one place where Beth is.  
  
It's painfully silent, not even the crickets wanting to approach the thick air between them. Somewhere in the distance something ripples the lake – a fish, probably – and Sarah takes to just holding the smoke in her mouth before releasing it so she won't risk coughing in front of the one person who should be taking all these dumb things about her and milking them for all they're worth.  
  
"I didn't know you smoke," Beth says after a stretch of silence, instead of nearly a thousand other sentences Sarah expected.  
  
They both stare at the cigarette between Sarah's fingers. Beth watches the paper burn.  
  
"I don't, they're Rachel's. It's a-"  _joke_ , Sarah was going to say, but then she's the one smoking so maybe it isn't.  
  
Beth doesn't need her to finish the sentence anyway, head shifting in a slight nod and turning back out to face the lake. Sarah swallows hard at the way the moonlight paints the curve of Beth's neck, cutting almost like a noose.  
  
Sarah panics and says, "we've missed you at the campfires" quite stupidly, immediately wanting to retract her words.  
  
There isn't even a  _we_  to begin with and Sarah's not an idiot, everyone knows why Beth doesn't come anymore, and this is such a mess she contemplates just rolling off the dock into the water to complete this fantastic evening. At least then she wouldn't have to listen to herself talk.  
  
What looks to be the ghost of a smile graces Beth's lips. "Well you know, since Ali's DUI I've been trying to be supportive around events where there'll be alcohol."  
  
Sarah's jaw actually drops a fraction of an inch because what? Martha fucking Stewart indeed.  
  
Beth lets out a full-on chuckle and explains, "She's been trying to keep it a secret, but let's just say there was a  _lot_  of community service involved. She's lucky her mother has friends in high places."  
  
"That's-" Sarah just shakes her head, unable to stop a grin from forming. "Kay, I know she's your friend and all, but that's amazing."  
  
"Not exactly what you'd expect from Alison, huh?" Beth says with a quirk of a smile.  
  
Sarah brings the cigarette to her lips again and continues to shake her head in awe.  
  
"Just don't spread it around," Beth asks, and Sarah swears. "She'd kill me if she knew I told and she'd probably get kicked out if the campers heard, so."  
  
Sarah agrees, exhaling smoke into the night air. It's somewhat chilly without the sun, the humidity finally deciding to fuck off for a bit, and she sorta wishes she'd thought to put something on over her tank top; her arms have that marbleized look to them that she hates and her skin's threatening goose bumps.  
  
Beth seems unaffected, having the good sense to bring a sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal her pale wrists. Sarah watches her trace one of the visible veins with her pinky nail, eyes still on some invisible horizon – it's soft and ghostly and such a  _Beth_  action Sarah almost can't stand it, the way it aches in her chest, and she has to drag her eyes away to the glimmering water.  
  
"You know," she says, needing to ripple the silence, "I've been arrested a couple times myself."  
  
Beth's gaze snaps to her and there's a hint of amusement in it, as if she's not too surprised. "Really. Not a DUI, I hope."  
  
Sarah has a sudden need to hear Beth bitch about Alison but files it away for another time when they're actually friends and everything with Paul is so far behind them they can't even remember his name. (It'd have to be another universe, but part of her is hopeful. She really does genuinely like the girl.)  
  
"Uh, mostly shoplifting," she says with a shrug, remembering how  _pleasantly_  Mrs. S took that. "Assault, once."  
  
Beth glances down at Sarah's hands as if looking for evidence and Sarah curls her fingers.  
  
"My boyfriend filed charges against me," she says softly. She takes another drag of the cigarette. "Because I finally- uh, stood up for myself for once."  
  
"Shit," Beth breathes out.  
  
It's nothing near the explanation Sarah's wanted so hard to give her, but it feels at least like a small crack in the glass for her to peer in; to maybe hold some stuff up together and catch sight of a pattern.  _Listen, I make the worst choices when my sense of self-worth is involved_. But then, doesn't everybody? Is she just the only one who always seems to make those terrible choices with boys?  
  
Her cigarette burns out and she tosses it in the lake, hoping some fish finds the butt and eats it and grows superpowers.  
  
"The charges didn't stick of course," she says, because Beth seems to be thinking pretty hard about it.  
  
"That's still..." Beth shakes her head and then tucks her hands under her bare thighs.  
  
"Yeah," Sarah says.  
  
Beth shuts her eyes for a second and when she opens them they're the color of murky glass. "Did you love him?"  
  
Sarah inhales sharply, wondering how many times she can lose herself around Beth like this. It's the last thing she was expecting to hear and yet makes perfect sense, given everything, that this is where she'd take it; Sarah can almost see them talking about Paul in their reflections in the water, rippling where his name hits.  
  
"I thought so," she says, quiet. "I still kinda... Maybe I still think so. I don't know. It really messed me up."  
  
Beth nods like she truly might get it and is equally sorry and Sarah wishes she was someone who could hug her because she feels like they both need it.  
  
Mostly she wants to apologize. Not even for Paul; just for this being how the cards were played.  
  
"Ali's gonna kill me if I don't get some sleep tonight," Beth's saying suddenly, peeling herself off the dock.  
  
Sarah tilts her head back to watch her stand up and feels incredibly small at her feet. "Yeah, course. You okay to-"  
  
She was going to say  _walk back alone_  but even if she wasn't Sarah isn't exactly the type of person to walk back with her, especially not with her cabin being attached to Alison's. She can just see Alison waiting with a pitchfork and shotgun like some possessive dad.  
  
"See you at breakfast," Beth just says in reply.  
  
Still, there's a hint of a smile there. Sarah holds onto it as Beth heads back through the trees to where her cabin sits, wanting to immortalize the way it slightly, momentarily, lit up her eyes.  
  
She stays at the dock for another twenty minutes, hand covering the cigarettes in her pocket, thinking equally of Beth and Rachel and how liberating it was to take an ashtray to Vic's face and how much she misses getting to run down hills, completely untethered. What it was to be absolutely free.  
  
And then when everything inside her aches as if she's been out running in the bitter cold for hours she finally heads back through the dense forest, almost grateful, in the dark, to have forgotten her flashlight. To only have that distant glimmer of light from the mess hall ahead of her and to have nothing else to do but continue to move forward.

 

* * *

  
  
Sarah sleeps through the staff meeting in the morning and apparently so does Rachel because the moment Delphine has her kids seated at breakfast she heads over to them, motioning for Sarah to join her where Rachel sits near her girls with a black coffee. Smart move on Delphine's part, Sarah thinks as she scoots down the bench. No way Rachel's moving anywhere for the next twenty minutes.  
  
The girl looks about as rough as Sarah feels; a bruise-like shadow under her eyes, the look of death across her face. Even her usually perfect hair has a slight bit sticking out in the back that Sarah finds herself wanting to smooth down as she gets squashed in next to her by Delphine.  
  
"I'm going to assume your cabin was overlooked this morning," Delphine says as she twists on the bench to face them both, "and not that the two of you  _both_  decided not to show up."  
  
"For the..." Rachel blinks, groggy and looking ready to stab whichever child talks to her first.  
  
Sarah can't imagine how wake-up went in her bunk this morning. "Staff meeting," she fills in. Delphine nods and takes a sip of coffee.  
  
Where Sarah is trapped in the middle she's acutely aware of Rachel's breathing, so close she can feel the heat of it on her neck and is forced to hold herself in an uncomfortably stiff position to meet Delphine's gaze while not blocking Rachel's view. She imagines the three of them are quite the sight: all in a row with their coffee cups, so close their elbows are touching. Delphine either has no sense of personal space or she's enjoying forcing Sarah into this.  
  
"It's not like we missed anything," Sarah guesses going on every other staff meeting she's been to.  
  
Rachel exhales beside her and onto her collarbone. She wishes she'd worn a turtleneck.  
  
"Unless you count nothing as Rachel being chosen to lead the group hike this afternoon," Delphine says with pointedly raised eyebrows.  
  
Sarah snorts and tries to bury it in her coffee. "That's shit, mate."  
  
Rachel says nothing but her body is stiff and Sarah's almost glad she can't see her expression. Judging from the look one of her kids is giving her it's terrifying.  
  
"Alison was chosen to lead with her," Delphine goes on, and Sarah full-out laughs. "Yes, but then she had a little  _chat_  with the director and he asked for someone to replace her and you'll never guess who Cosima volunteered."  
  
Delphine doesn't have that murderous look in her eyes that Sarah would expect if it was her and her stomach sinks at the realization.  
  
"Are you bloody kidding me," she bites out.  
  
It's Rachel's turn to let out a little laugh and Sarah lets it slide only because she knows exactly who's going to sign up for the hike and who they'll be leading through the fucking  _mountains_  in absolute hell clouds of mosquitoes this afternoon.  
  
"I'd advise not skipping out next time," Delphine says with a lift of her shoulders.  
  
Sarah narrows her eyes at her. "Or maybe you could talk to your bloody girlfriend about  _her own business_."  
  
Rachel exhales a laugh through her nose that hits Sarah's neck in an odd spot and she scoots as far back on the bench as possible, just wanting to get back to her snotty kids for once and away from all of this, smacking the table as she finds herself caught between the two of them. No way to extract her legs without kicking either one of them and god, would she love to.  
  
"You might ask one of us to move," Rachel says, looking down at Sarah's boots in the coldest way.  
  
"Well," Delphine says, taking in the both of them, "I just thought I'd let you two know and since that's done and I have my six year-olds to get back to..."  
  
She slips away before Sarah can think to throttle her but she does look back in time to catch a particularly nasty look. Sarah saves a second one for Rachel.  
  
"You're very much free to go now," Rachel sniffs.  
  
She's right, there's nothing holding her in place anymore with Delphine huddled at her table with Cosima and about a thousand tiny kids, but Sarah still turns her head so she's inches away from Rachel's face and holds her gaze tightly.  
  
"Lemme tell you, this hike is not for the faint of heart," she warns.  
  
Rachel swallows and she finds herself watching it move her throat before snapping her eyes back up.  
  
"I assure you I've been on a hike before," Rachel says, but between the slight falter in her voice and the piece of hair that's still sticking out Sarah can't take her seriously.  
  
She finds her hand coming up without thinking and before she can stop herself she's reaching out to pat the hair back into place. Rachel absolutely  _freezes_  at the contact and the table of girls stares at them as if shocked to see someone this close to Rachel without getting their hand snapped off; it'd be comical if Sarah wasn't the one trying to slowly scoot away, her hand still in the air between them like a guilty kid.  
  
" _What_ ," Rachel all but hisses, "do you think you're doing."  
  
Sarah's lips tug down at the corners as she stares with wide eyes at the hair she just touched. "Uh... it was all mussed up," she manages to get out, moving farther down the bench without breaking her gaze.  
  
Rachel's hand comes to touch where Sarah's had been and she glowers like she took the chunk of hair with her.  
  
"This is why you're the witch," one of Rachel's kids mutters as she munches on a piece of toast.  
  
It's enough to break the tension and Sarah laughs with the rest of the girls. Rachel, rolling her eyes, goes back to her pretentious black coffee and nurses it like it's the only thing keeping her from just walking out right now and heading back to bed. Sarah really wouldn't blame her, needing about six more hours of sleep herself before she feels ready to tackle this hike.  
  
As she slides back over to her end of the table Quinn loudly announces that she's  _sooo pumped for the hike_  and Sarah glances at the coffee machine, wondering how much she can fit in her body before she spontaneously combusts.  
  
The answer is apparently three cups – she takes the third one to go, smuggling the Styrofoam-housed bastard out the mess hall and back to the cabin for bunk inspections, and by first activity block she's so jittery she actually has to sit down on the edge of the tennis court to collect herself much to Quinn's delight.  
  
"Tennis is for rich people," she says in the same breath as, "look at Daniela's butt jiggle!"  
  
And Sarah really, truly, wants nothing more than to head back to bed and start this day all over again. At least disappear long enough to punch Cosima in the face.

 

* * *

  
  
Sarah's first summer here she got roped into doing the hike with Mark, who turned out to know his shit when it came to nature. The route for these afternoon hikes is the worst, he'd told her, handing her a thing of bug spray that she hadn't thought to bring, particularly as it cuts through The Mountains at a steep incline where every bug in the world comes to hang out.  
  
The hike itself wasn't the issue. Sarah's thighs ached for days after, but that paled in comparison to trying to wrangle the types of kids who willingly sign up for this hike through slippery rocks and across a fucking  _river_.  
  
"Quinn may have tried to drown me last year," she explains to Rachel as they're packing their bags in the clearing.  
  
Rachel's face pales and she glances over to the farthest picnic table where Quinn has Daniela's water bottle and is tossing it in the air. Daniela at least doesn't seem too fazed after three days of this.  
  
"What exactly," Rachel asks, slipping another granola bar into her bag, "transpired there?"  
  
Sarah had gotten to the place where she could laugh about it, during the year, knowing it was nothing in comparison to that god-awful canoe trip, but now in the face of another trek with a group of demons (actually, most of them aren't that bad as far as she knows) it's creeping down her skin in the same chilling way again.  
  
"Let's just say she thought it was funny," she says with a grimace.  
  
To jump off the log in the first place, and then when Sarah went in after her to hold them both down in such a way she wasn't sure it wasn't a suicide mission. Luckily her own need for air won out and Quinn popped back up with a grin but Sarah tasted algae in her mouth for weeks after. And Quinn, with that charming face of hers, never said a word about it.  
  
None of Mark's warnings had covered a near-death experience and she can still picture the way he continued to glance back at her, the color of snow, the entire way down. As if she might disappear in those intervals where he tried not to trip.  
  
The upshot of doing it again this year is that nearly all of Alison's kids pulled out when she did, choosing her field hockey session instead to be close to her. Sarah would have preferred kayaking or cooking (not that she can cook in any way, but the kitchen staff like her and don't mind when she 'supervises') but she seems less likely to be subject to camp songs without Alison's girls and she'd rather eat river mud again than listen to the thousandth rendition of  _Baby Bumblebee_.  
  
She catches Rachel just as they're about to head off and mutters at her ear, "I swear on my life if you try to start a song I will tie you up to a tree and let the bears chew your face off."  
  
One of the younger kids, a chunky boy from Rudy's group, stares at Sarah with wide eyes and drags his buddy back a few steps. Rachel purses her lips.  
  
"Honestly, Sarah, if you've learned anything about me-"  
  
She doesn't have time to finish because upon first sign of confirmation Sarah sends the kids marching into the forest with a shout, determined to make it through this with only minor flesh wounds and hopefully back with enough time to sleep before dinner. Even with getting fished out of the river last time she and Mark finished before the two hours were up; Mark insisted she see the nurse as soon as they got back, worried about a dry drowning, but Sarah headed straight for her bunk.  
  
(She didn't swallow  _that_  much water. It wasn't as if she could feel it rattling around inside her or anything.)  
  
What she doesn't consider, however, clomping through the leaves, is Rachel's complete inability to read a map.  
  
After a good half hour climbing mostly in silence (minus a bout of shouting when someone thought they saw a deer that turned out to be an oddly-shaped boulder) Rachel slows to a stop ahead of Sarah and just lets the map fall to her side in a limp hand.  
  
Sarah glances at Quinn beside her and then jogs up to where Rachel's standing, staring very calmly out at the thick of trees surrounding them.  
  
It'd be beautiful if Sarah wasn't picking up on Rachel's growing apprehension; under the canopy, the sun comes down in mottled patches – giving the rocky earth an almost geometric feel. Sarah's been snapping pictures here and there to bring back to Felix but her camera hangs heavy around her neck as Rachel finally turns to look at her.  
  
"What's up?" Sarah asks lightly, aware of the kids bumbling to a stop behind her.  
  
With just over twenty of them and their variously exhaustion-stunned faces it looks too much like a ravenous mob for Sarah to let herself turn around. She doesn't need the nightmares later.  
  
"It's just," Rachel says, blinking and glancing down at the crinkled map in her hands, "I wasn't exactly aware that there were multiple routes on this. And I may have... ah, been following several of them. So essentially none of them."  
  
Sarah's stomach flips. "So we're basically..."  
  
Rachel nods and apparently neither of them wants to say it.  
  
"Well that can't be right," Sarah says, snatching the map from Rachel's hands.  
  
Their fingers graze and her breath hitches at the contact, trying to play it off like she was startled by something off in the distance. The kids are getting antsy anyway, murmuring amongst themselves about the impromptu break, Quinn and Daniela frowning at Sarah like she's trying to pull another  _sit down and shut up_  moment like last hike. Sarah wonders if Eye Spy will work this time.  
  
She pointedly steps away from Rachel to read the map, not letting herself think about the warmth of the paper where Rachel had been holding it.  
  
"North is the red arrow on the compass," Rachel informs her and Sarah snaps back, "I'm not an idiot, thank-you."  
  
One of Paul's tall boys snickers at this but quiets down when Rachel sets her sharp eyes on him.  
  
The map isn't...  _entirely_  illegible, with years of use wearing it out in the creases and the original design so small Sarah finds herself squinting at the legend. She'd let Mark handle this shit last time because he seemed to know what he was doing; now that she thinks about it he didn't look at the map at all.  
  
The plus side is she definitely recognizes the river. And she's been hearing water for a while now, so they can't be  _too_  far off.  
  
"You didn't happen to bring a compass with you, did you?" she asks Rachel.  
  
Rachel looks at her like  _why the fuck would I do a thing like that_  and seems ready to say so but a younger boy, Seth's, maybe, comes at them with a Boy Scouts-issued compass and proudly presents it to Sarah with a dimpled grin.  
  
"My mom didn't think I'd need it," he tells her, shifting from one foot to the other. "But I knew we'd be going in the forest and we're always supposed to be prepared so I brought it anyway. Do you know how to use it?"  
  
Rachel smirks and Sarah deliberately looks down at the compass in her hand, watching the arrow wiggle around. "Of course I do," she says.  
  
The boy nods unconvincingly and then looks at the compass himself.  
  
"That's north," he says, pointing out into the trees.  
  
It's a blur of green is what it is but north is definitely a direction on the map and she holds it up to try to compare. The whines of  _are we lost_  start to come from the group as she does so, along with a few kids taking out their trail mix. Rachel glares at all of them until they're quiet again.  
  
Sarah would thank her if she didn't get them into this mess in the first place and remembering Rachel didn't even mention she can't read maps when Sarah told her to walk in the front has her chest burning with rage again. Because really? That wasn't even a thought that crossed her mind as they walked for thirty-odd minutes?  
  
"I think the river would be this way," the kid says, pointing to their left, after examining the map.  
  
"Well look at you," Sarah says as she ruffles his ashy hair.  
  
He rewards her with another smile, the dimple so sweet she resists the urge to touch it. God, she wishes she could trade for the boys. She does so much better with them than catty, drama-filled girls.  
  
"So we know where we're going?" Rachel asks in a tone that suggests she's had nothing to do with this.  
  
Sarah narrows her eyes and takes the whistle from her as well. "Yeah, no thanks to you. Walk in the back, will you? I'll get us to our rest point and then we'll see if there's time to continue."  
  
Rachel opens her mouth as if about to protest but then seems to realize she now has the easier job, following behind and rounding up the stragglers. If the state of her tennis shoes is anything to go on she'll enjoy the slower pace. Why on earth she didn't bring hiking boots to a camp in the woods is beyond Sarah.  
  
Rachel ends up walking with Quinn and two of her own girls (the one with the limp and the little one that was hounding her at the picnic table yesterday) and seems rightly miserable with the conversation, maybe even a little bit scared to be so close to Quinn. Sarah smirks as she turns around again; serves her right for dragging them this far off the path.  
  
They make it to the river in decent enough time thanks to Sarah's relentless (and exhausting) pace. Breaking through the trees is like walking straight into a wall of mosquitoes and she's grateful for her bug spray as they bounce off her skin and into the dirt below.  
  
Rachel's whiney kid keeps opening her mouth to let everyone know they're flying  _in_  her mouth, and Sarah snorts as she catches Rachel's eye: a silent plea of  _this is what I deal with every waking hour_.  
  
"We'll be fine on the other side of the river," Sarah tells everyone, knowing full well what a lie that is and just wanting them to quit bitching.  
  
She doesn't miss how, as soon as they're gearing up to cross the giant log, Rachel sends Quinn to the front of the group for Sarah to handle.  
  
"If I drown you and the kids'll starve to death up here," she calls over to Rachel, who's reapplying bug spray to her long, surprisingly tan legs. Sarah purposely looks away at the nearest thing to her, Quinn, a smug smile creeping out as she catches Quinn's look of alarm.  
  
"My mom made me watch  _Lord of The Flies_  before camp this year," Quinn says in a quiet voice.  
  
Sarah's eyebrows raise.  
  
"She was going through a classics phase," Quinn explains, eyeing her fellow campers like trying to decide who'd get eaten first. "Thought I could learn something."  
  
Sarah helps Quinn up onto the log first, clutching her hand tight. "Looks like you might need me to make it across this log then, huh?"  
  
The current isn't too strong today, but the sight of forest debris and clumps of algae floating down river has Sarah's stomach churning. Even after all the mouthwash she can still taste it; the chalky, sulfur-like flavor and the way it forced itself up her nose.  
  
Quinn catches her glancing down as they walk, leading the way for the group behind them, and raises her head sheepishly.  
  
"Your payback's gonna come at this year's water fight," Sarah lets her know.  
  
Quinn swallows and her grip tightens and on the other side, when she finally lets go, she's left little fingernail marks in the skin of Sarah's palms. Sarah sends her back to Rachel as soon as everyone's crossed the log.  
  
They stop for snack and a rest less than ten minutes later, at a clearing of picnic tables that thankfully confirms they've made it back to the route. Everything is slightly angled so that any water bottles left on their sides roll off the tables and down through some rocks, and as Sarah unpeels her backpack from her sweaty back she laughs at the sight of kids chasing after them.  
  
It feels nice to sit, her feet screaming as she leans back against the table and looks out at the slope of trees before them. Her tank top is wet in the back where her bag was resting but there's enough of a breeze to cool her down a little and it keeps most of the mosquitoes at bay. At least enough to not feel like she'll catch them in her teeth if she dares open her mouth.  
  
Rachel joins her on the bench a few minutes later; she's arguably more disheveled than Sarah, her cheeks pink and sweat glistening on her neck and collarbone. It's... quite the sight. Sarah drops her gaze and blames her pulse on just having hiked up here.  
  
"If I ever see another tree..." Rachel threatens lazily, her voice gravely from exhaustion and doing more for Sarah than she'd like to admit.  
  
She exhales and forces a smile. "Just wait for the walk back down, Rach."  
  
Rachel eyes her in what could almost be amusement at the nickname that slipped out and Sarah realizes, suddenly, how close they truly are on this bench, Rachel really not leaving her much space. If she scoots over she'll be in the dirt. It seems like a better option than sitting here with that dumb shortened version of her name floating in the air between them and Sarah brings her water bottle to her lips to try and wash away the embarrassment.  
  
" _Evie_!" Rachel snaps suddenly, a finger pointed at the whiney child who's attempting to climb an overhanging tree.  
  
Evie turns with guilt and fear all over her face and slowly inches down the trunk, apparently not realizing how close she was to tumbling down the small cliff. Rachel probably only called her back so she wouldn't have to go chasing after her but Sarah still sneaks her a glance of appreciation.  
  
"I don't want to see a single camper up in a tree," Rachel warns, commanding the attention of the group as they mostly chug water and sit draped over the tables. "Or anywhere away from the picnic tables, or playing a hand game.  _Not_  in my presence."  
  
There isn't a single complaint mostly due to exhaustion but Sarah still gives her a little smile.  
  
"Not a fan of that Tarzan shit?" she asks quiet enough so the kids don't hear.  
  
Rachel looks at her like she'd rather eat glass. "Someone taught my girls this morning. I want them dead."  
  
In all likelihood it was one of Alison's kids but Sarah still feels guilty, not putting it past Afsheen or Sameera to be spreading that shit around. It's like some sort of camp plague.  
  
(She'd been concerned  _she_  was the camp plague, with the state of her body yesterday. But a nap and more coffee than she wishes to have consumed in so little time seems to have knocked it out of her. That, or an actual conversation with Beth scared her immune system back into working order.)  
  
Rachel manages to down half her water bottle without making a sound, the hydration alleviating some of the rosiness of her cheeks but doing nothing for the smudge of dirt on her neck. Sarah can't imagine how that got there. Or how dirty  _she_  must be if Rachel Duncan has dirt on her.  
  
She half wishes for a mirror to maybe sort herself out but then also really doesn't want to see her hair in this condition; it feels sentient enough as is and acknowledging it might give it actual life.  
  
"I feel like  _shite_ ," she settles on saying, low for only Rachel to hear.  
  
Rachel laughs and the sound is pleasantly surprising.  
  
"I'm sure I look as bad as you," Rachel says, eyes drifting down Sarah's body.  
  
Sarah shivers as she feels them pass over her skin and wishes she'd worn pants. It has to be the heat, but whatever is happening with her stupid brain and Rachel today is seriously unnerving. Twilight Zone, or something. She drinks more water to drown it.  
  
"You're looking a little flushed," Rachel says, and Sarah swears if that's a smirk- "I hope you aren't dehydrated. Do you have anything with electrolytes?"  
  
"I'm fine," Sarah all but croaks.  
  
Rachel's eyebrow lifts as a definite smirk slips out. "Maybe a quick dunk in the river, then. I'm sure Quinn would love to facilitate."  
  
Sarah smacks her with the map and hops up to find somewhere else to sit, leaving Rachel in her smugness on the splintery bench, and does her best to ignore the strange lightness in her chest that's suddenly afflicting her. No fucking way is this happening. With  _Rachel_.  
  
Come hell or high water she is drinking tonight to bury this deep, deep inside her.

 

* * *

  
  
They make it back to camp just as the dinner gong sounds. The path down was at least slightly less grueling than the way up but paired with Rachel's eyes on her the whole descent Sarah feels ready to jump in the lake – something she heavily considers as they pass by it to head to the mess hall, only moving on because her body's so tired she'd probably sink straight to the bottom.  
  
The kids disperse to their tables as soon as they enter the mess hall; Rachel brings her two girls over to the rest of her group without a word and Sarah drops down hard on her bench, wondering if Madeleine will grab her something to eat when their table's called up to the kitchen line because she's sure as hell not getting up again.  
  
"You look terrible," Raya tells her as she grabs for another napkin.  
  
She's building some sort of origami-like creature that was probably inspired by her art session and Sarah wishes she'd been picked to lead that instead. The only upside is she's off the hook for hikes for the rest of the summer – and she and Rachel aren't likely to be stuck leading an activity together again, so she can let whatever the hike planted inside her die out as it deserves. Her face feels hot at the thought.  
  
"Did you drink  _any_  water?" Madeleine chides. She has her hair in a sort of braided half-crown that wasn't there earlier, looking more put together than anyone should be at camp.  
  
Sarah wouldn't be surprised to run into her one day in an impressive pantsuit in a courtroom, some fancy lawyer who'll either be prosecuting Sarah or looking through her at the coffee cart as she puts in her order. Some kids are just born to rule the world, she guesses. Mrs. S would probably say Sarah was born to cause trouble.  
  
"I'm not dehydrated," Sarah promises and Madeleine tuts.  
  
She resists the urge to put her head down, knowing Paul wouldn't miss a chance to come over and offer her a  _favor_ , still holding out for the right moment to ask for something in return. A glance down the bench makes her feel better – Rachel seems to have face-planted on the table and decided to stay there, her kids putting bits of napkin in her hair without fear of repercussion.  
  
They seem to actually like her, Sarah thinks. She'd been so sure the kids would see right through her and burn her at the stake but apparently there's something in her that charmed them and they laugh around her like she's part of their group. Even with them calling her their witch they still seem to adore her.  
  
Sarah wonders if she's been going about this all wrong, putting in too much effort when clearly not caring at all would've gained her the same respect.  
  
"She's gonna slap somebody when she wakes up," Quinn says, grinning at Rachel's paper-filled hair.  
  
"I will too if you try that with me," Sarah warns her, and looks around at the rest of the girls for good measure. They roll their eyes but still signal that they got it.  
  
Their table's called a minute later, everybody but Quinn and Daniela hopping to their feet to go line up. Quinn makes Daniela yank her upright and the two walk over like they've been through a war and Sarah savors the moment, knowing it won't be long before Quinn's back to harassing her, so predictable in her anger.  
  
Sarah doesn't even pretend to budge from where she's planted herself on the bench. Madeleine glances back, concern turning to exasperation and she snags a second plastic tray. God bless her.  
  
Rachel apparently doesn't have it in her to grab dinner either; she peels herself off the table slowly, napkin bits raining down and teetering in her upright position. She's clearly aware of the mess in her hair but doesn't even bother to pull her fingers through it.  
  
"You can share whatever Madeleine brings back for me," Sarah calls down the table. It's only about four feet but it feels like a canyon.  
  
Rachel gives her half an eye roll. "I'm sure you'd find some way to poison it. No thank-you."  
  
"So you'd rather starve?" Sarah frowns, semi wondering if there  _is_  a way to poison it.  
  
"I have crackers in my bunk," Rachel says curtly. On Sarah's incredulous look, she adds, "they're almond-based, they're very good."  
  
They'd better be in a sealed container, Sarah thinks but is too tired to say out loud. If the cabins get ants because of Rachel she's tossing her in the lake, suitcase and all. There's no way she's dealing with a bug infestation again.  
  
Madeleine returns with two trays balanced in her arms and a deliberate bottle of water rolling around on what's obviously Sarah's tray. She drops it down in front of her, sliding in to sit next to her as the rest of the girls join them. Quinn looks a little put-out to see Madeleine taking her spot but doesn't say anything.  
  
"I got you salad because you don't take care of your body," Madeleine tells her, pointing at the giant bowl. "Hard-boiled eggs for protein."  
  
"My mom says the yolks'll make you fat," Quinn says as she digs in to her mac and cheese.  
  
Madeleine raises her eyebrows at Quinn's plate. "Your mom's an idiot, no offence."  
  
Sarah's expecting food to be flung or something to be knocked off the table in anger but Quinn just shrugs and stabs at a piece of pasta, clearly having accepted this long ago. Sarah feels a pang of sympathy for her.  
  
"What can I give to Rachel, since she also clearly doesn't take care of her body?" Sarah asks Madeleine, glancing over at where Rachel's finally removing the napkin bits from her hair.  
  
Rachel's posture stiffens at Sarah's comment but she refrains from saying anything in return as if she's finally someone who takes the high road.  
  
Madeleine taps her fork against her chin. "Hmm, the banana maybe? I can go back and grab her something if you want..."  
  
From the end of the table Sophia pipes up, startling Sarah who'd forgotten she was there. "She can have my stir-fry, I didn't even touch it. I didn't know there was zucchini in it otherwise I wouldn't have taken it."  
  
Madeleine gets up to grab it, taking the cornbread Zohal offers up and Raya's second juice box as well. It's probably more than Rachel would have taken herself and she looks quite sheepish as Madeleine brings it to her but thanks her anyway, catching Sarah's eye to give her a quick nod before examining what vegetables she's about to put into her body.  
  
As Madeleine sits back down to eat, frowning at Sarah picking around the spinach leaves, she tells Quinn, " _this_  is why they're adults."  
  
Quinn snorts out a laugh and shakes her head, unable to argue with that.

 

* * *

  
  
It's a campfire and skit night for the kids so there's no point in the staff having a fire of their own, no one wanting to return to the spot where they watched twenty different reenactments of the Minions movie while kids wiped marshmallows on their shirts.  
  
No fire means drinking in the boathouse, which means the senior camp staff are less likely to show because they'd rather do the same thing on their low ropes course. Why the junior camp doesn't head over there is beyond Sarah; she'd much rather get drunk on the giant spiderweb than in the damp, splinter-filled boathouse. And she always misses Krystal when she's not around. There's just something about the girl that makes everything more enjoyable.  
  
Sarah drags herself down to the boathouse anyway, bringing a hoodie just in case tonight gets as chilly as last night. It's still humid, so she doubts it, but at the very least she'll have something to sit on.  
  
She'd considered inviting Rachel again, spending ten minutes stood outside her window trying to psych herself up to knock, but decided that a) Rachel would much rather sleep than hang out and b) there's no way Sarah wants her around if she really does get drunk. And somehow the thought of seeing Rachel with a few drinks in her has her skin feeling hot – it'd either be the worst or best thing to happen to her.  
  
"You're quiet tonight," Delphine says as they float in one of the rowboats tied to a dock.  
  
Cosima is beside her with bourbon, of all things, having made a nest for herself out of lifejackets, and runs her hand along Delphine's bare legs to the rhythm of whatever techno crap is playing from a nearby boombox. Delphine either doesn't notice or would rather not publicly acknowledge that she does but Sarah knows that composure will be gone in three drinks.  
  
Sarah drags a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face. "Long day. Thanks again, Cosima."  
  
Cosima barely lifts her head but at least has the decency to look sort of guilty.  
  
"Hey," she says. "I thought you wanted to give Rachel a chance to open up, it seemed like a good opportunity."  
  
Sarah's exact words were  _Rachel needs to open the fuck up_  and she definitely didn't mean with  _her_ , which Cosima clearly knew. This was just vindictive.  
  
"You just wanted to see me suffer," she tosses back and Cosima grins.  
  
Delphine takes the opportunity to top up Sarah's glass with the cheap wine she brought tonight, no doubt procured from one of the pimply camp drivers who fall over their own feet every time Delphine looks in their direction. Her commitment to drinking is impressive.  
  
Sarah gulps down about half of it, wincing at the bitter taste. It isn't even a white or red thing – she just can't stand wine. But it's looking a lot better than Cosima's bourbon, which she still has no clue as to its origins. Hell, maybe. Her parents' liquor cabinet? If Sarah had taken anything from Mrs. S she'd have been slapped into last year but Cosima's parents seem a lot more chill from what Sarah's seen on Skype. Exactly the type of deadheads she'd expect to raise Cosima. Sarah secretly loves them.  
  
"Did Rachel do anything particularly awful today?" Delphine asks, leaning back against a lifejacket. It's muggy in here and the mosquitoes are out in full force but her hair still looks majestic.  
  
"Just..." Sarah takes another sip and tries not to think about Rachel's legs. "Uh, she got us lost for a bit actually, but we figured it out."  
  
Delphine and Cosima share a glance and Sarah focuses very hard on the glint of a lantern against the motorboat across from them. Neither of them can read minds to her knowledge but two and a half drinks in she wouldn't put it past her face to betray her.  _Seeing her covered in sweat and dirt did something to me. I think I finally snapped.  
  
_ "What the hell happened there?" Cosima asks and props herself up on her elbows so she can see Sarah over Delphine's legs.  
  
The boys are playing some sort of game behind the canoes, a triumphant roar coming up from the group. Sarah wonders distantly if Paul remembers taking her back there; remembers how she cut her back on a rough chunk of wood and wouldn't let him stop to take a look.  
  
There's probably still a scar. She's been careful with her gaze every time she's in front of a mirror, not wanting to know.  
  
"A mix up with the map," she says idly, and presses the Styrofoam rim to her lips.  
  
The acrid scent of wine fills her nose but it's better than Paul's body spray, so infused in this boathouse she swears she can taste it every time she hears him yell out.

It's vague enough that neither Cosima or Delphine feel like pressing the issue, or they sense she won't give them any more details even if they prod. She doesn't know why she isn't spilling the whole story, glorifying the littlest bits to rile them up even more, not at all caring about Rachel's reputation at this camp. She's done a good enough job herself at letting everyone know she doesn't want to be here; learning she's also terrible at it won't surprise anyone.  
  
No, it feels more, she admits to herself, holding out her cup so Delphine can refill it, like an act of preservation – like keeping it to herself will keep it whole, and she's for some reason afraid to lose it.  
  
It isn't even- god, nothing even happened.  
  
She sat next to Rachel at the picnic table, and Rachel was as tired and dirty as she was and somehow looked like a goddess anyway. Smirking like... like she  _knew_. Like she enjoyed the effect it had on Sarah, no doubt looking to rub it in later when Sarah least expects it. Rachel's playing some evil game and Sarah hates that she feels three steps behind.  
  
"I don't think we'll be seeing her back here next year," Delphine says of Rachel, relaxing into Cosima's side.  
  
Sarah frowns in the dark and tries to hide it behind another sip of wine. "You probably said the same thing about me, last year. God knows I made my share of mistakes."  
  
"Yes, but you wanted to be here," Delphine says as Cosima asks "are you defending her?"  
  
"Yeah," Sarah mutters. "No. I don't fucking know."  
  
The wooden bench seat between them in the boat acts as some sort of barrier, Sarah feeling small and stupid on the other side of their lifejacket nest. They're in the cozy bow and she's curled up like some baby in the very middle of the rowboat, her sweatshirt balled up like a pillow, rocking with the gentle lap of the lake and hating how the two of them are looking at her.  
  
"I just think- it's only the first week," Sarah tries again, staring at the wine bottle sitting on the seat next to her. "Maybe we're being a bit harsh."  
  
"You were quite lost the first week," Delphine offers as she tangles her fingers with Cosima's.  
  
Sarah shuts her eyes, tilting her face upwards to where all the spiders are probably watching. "Exactly, you know, she could just be kinda homesick or this is her first real job or... I mean, we know nothing about her. I feel kinda sorry for her."  
  
She doesn't. Or she does, but it's more that Rachel seems like she wouldn't even know if she  _was_  lonely, so used to being alone. Maybe if they took the time to get to know her...  
  
Her head is as muggy as the soupy air, skin flushed in a way that needs a long cold shower.  
  
As if Rachel Duncan would let anyone get to know her. Sarah laughs at herself for even entertaining the idea and shifts in the boat so her legs hang over the edge, toes dipping in the water, flat on her back on a pile of algae-covered rope. From her new vantage point all she can see is paddles and lifejackets in the rafters above her, faint outlines in the dark; spiderwebs drape over everything, shining here and there from lanterns and flashlights, and it all swims a little as she tries to focus.  
  
"Maybe too much wine," Delphine says, reaching over to put a cool hand on Sarah's forehead.  
  
No, Sarah thinks, not too much. Not nearly enough if she still can't stop thinking about Rachel.

 

* * *

  
  
She finds herself stumbling back through the forest about half an hour later, sweatshirt on but sleeves rolled up and wildly missing every mosquito she tries to swat out of the air. It strikes her as funny, her own hand hitting her thigh as it drops, and she laughs hard enough to need to grab onto the nearest tree to keep herself upright.  
  
Maybe Delphine had a point about the wine; she can already feel a headache forming through the fog, everything pressing down in a strange, metallic way.  
  
Coming up to the cabin is a godsend as she tries to regulate her body, wanting nothing more than to down a water bottle and curl up in bed for the four and a half hours until the morning bugle. She's so focused on the thought of sleep that she nearly misses Rachel sitting calmly on the porch steps, flicking mindlessly through a book there's no way she can read in the dark, her phone quiet on the step beside her.  
  
"Rachel," Sarah gets out, aiming to say much more but falling short as she approaches the porch.  
  
Rachel looks up with  _worry_. Her hazel eyes are shining in the faint moonlight, and Sarah clutches onto the rail post to steady herself.  
  
There's a moment of absolute silence as Rachel sets her book down beside her, pulling her knees in a little tighter as if afraid to take up too much space. And then she's shaking her head with a self-deprecating smile and lets her eyes drift up Sarah's body in the slowest, most excruciating way possible and Sarah finds herself holding her breath, not even sure what she's waiting for.  
  
"I had too much wine," Sarah mumbles when she's sure she feels Rachel's gaze on her lips. It was red so it probably stained but that doesn't seem to be why she's lingering.  
  
"I was concerned you might not make it back all right," Rachel says, finally looking away.  
  
She runs a hand down her camisole (a silky, cloud-colored thing) and then busies herself with her book, fingering the torn cover.  
  
Sarah swallows and forces herself to focus on the book and not her lithe fingers.  
  
"What are you reading?" she asks. It comes out slightly slurred and she wants to roll her eyes at herself for being such a cliché.  
  
"Camus," Rachel says, like she's said it a thousand times before, but then quietly asks, "would you like to hear an excerpt?"  
  
A bloom of heat creeps across Sarah's chest as she nods and carefully lowers herself to the bottom step, sitting so she can lean against the railing and still see Rachel's graceful form above her. It feels, strangely, not unlike a Christmas mass Mrs. S dragged them to once where all the children were asked to come up to hear the pastor tell the Nativity story – but somehow, in the dark, full of wine, a little more holy. Maybe it's the stars. Maybe... Sarah stops thinking.  
  
Rachel cracks the book open to an obviously memorized page, the corner folded down in a way that looks like it's been there forever. "Just a brief passage," she says.  
  
Sarah nods and rests her head against the railing and all she can see is Rachel.  
  
"I ask what is involved in the condition I recognize as mine," Rachel reads, her voice gentle and sure , lilting over the words. "I know it implies obscurity and ignorance; and I am assured that this ignorance explains everything and that this darkness is my light. But there is no reply here to my intent and this stirring lyricism cannot hide the paradox from me."  
  
The words hit Sarah in waves, falling over her skin in Rachel's voice like the start of a rainstorm that hasn't yet had time to learn to be forceful.  
  
Rachel dips her head as she waits for a response, her short hair shifting like an ashen curtain down the curve of her jaw, giving her the illusion of water that Sarah's been craving for hours now.  
  
"That's- wow, deep shit," Sarah mumbles, her tongue thick in her mouth.  
  
Rachel glances upwards and shakes her head a little and says "I knew you wouldn't be able to appreciate its nuances" as if the spell's finally broken, gathering her stuff and standing up in a fluid motion that has Sarah's head pounding.  
  
"I take it you can make it to bed all right?" Rachel asks before heading inside, waiting just long enough for Sarah's confirmation.  
  
And then she's gone and Sarah's alone on the steps, the world suddenly filled with crickets and a deep, velveteen sky, and one line keeps playing on repeat in Sarah's mind:  _this darkness is my light_. Over and over in Rachel's voice, assuring her it is.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neither Sarah nor Rachel came adequately prepared for rain, Sarah makes a realization, Rachel does watercolors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter contains a suicide attempt. please consider your comfort level when reading- it involves blood and there is a mention of pills as means of committing suicide.  
> there is also a brief discussion on menstruation and a mention of domestic violence.  
> all of this takes place near the end; the suicide attempt after karaoke night. 
> 
> if anyone for whatever reason doesn't feel comfortable reading it, please feel free to message me at scientisms.tumblr.com if you'd like a summary of what transpired (please also let me know what you're uncomfortable reading as I'll skip over/pare down as much as I can without largely affecting the plot). 
> 
> and my apologies for the beastly length of this chapter -- it's just under 30,000 words with me trying to cut down. but it didn't feel right to split it in two.
> 
> as always, thank-you so much for your amazing feedback.

 

* * *

 

Sarah sees Rachel – outside of meals – three times in the three days following Thursday night’s wine incident. (Sarah can’t call it anything else. Sarah can’t even think about it.)  
  
The first occurs while Sarah’s still hungover Friday morning, hiding behind sunglasses and another coffee smuggled out of the mess hall, walking her girls to the soccer field. Rachel is at archery with an arrow in her hands; Sarah stumbles as Rachel looks over and spills her coffee down her legs. There’s still a stain on her sneakers.  
  
The second: Sarah leads a giant game of Capture The Flag on Saturday while a good chunk of the camp is on a day trip. Rachel runs a nature walk through enemy territory, glinting like a bullet in the sun. Sarah isn’t sure if she’s the deer or the hunter – Rachel stares her down anyway, not even flinching as one of Beth’s girls runs into her with the flag. Sarah seems to lose and she hadn’t even picked a side.  
  
The third is quiet and Sarah nearly overlooks it, but they accidentally share a log at Sunday morning’s non-denominational Reflection Time and Sarah listens to her breathe all through a nature meditation. They don’t make eye contact. Sarah doesn’t even mention it to Delphine after.  
  
(All she’s told Delphine so far is that Rachel waited up for her on Thursday. Anything more and it’d become something bigger, and even the brief comment to Cosima that Rachel was still awake has the girl convinced there’s something going on. _I can guarantee you it’s nothing_ , Sarah promised. And it is now, with how well they’re doing at ignoring each other.)  
  
She still hears her at night, padding around her room through the shared wall not unlike a caged animal. She’s sure Rachel hears her pacing as well.  
  
Sarah’s helping her girls load their bows on the archery field when someone finally says something, breaking whatever silence had somehow grown up around it. Quinn’s shooting imaginary arrows into the sky as she does so and then aims her empty bow at Rachel’s rigid form on the bleachers.  
  
“She’s a narcissist,” Quinn says, letting another imaginary arrow fly.  
  
Sarah fumbles with Ava’s bow. “What? How’d you learn that word?”  
  
The specialist gives her an exasperated look from the other end of the line and she resists the urge to point out that she could easily, and very well within her job description, just let him do this on his own. God knows she’s not looking to do anything but kill time.  
  
“That’s what my dad says my mom is,” Quinn says. She squints an eye at the top part of her bow, where some of the paint is coming off in little flakes.  
  
“What do you think it means?” Sarah asks, watching Zohal set up her bow just fine on her own. Right.    
  
Clearly not needed, she circles back to Quinn.  
  
“Someone who just thinks about themselves,” Quinn says. She’s running her thumb over the chipped paint, frowning. “Doesn’t know how to care about other people.”  
  
Sarah glances at Rachel sitting by herself on the bleachers, staring out at her girls on the field. From behind she seems docile, harmless. Sarah imagines taking a seat beside her and not getting a cold remark in return.  
  
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think that’s the right word for her.”  
  
Quinn considers this as she plucks on the string, something they’ve been warned repeatedly not to do and is why she still has to earn back her arrow privilege. “I have lots of other words my dad calls my mom,” she offers.  
  
Sarah swallows back a laugh. “Oh, I’m sure you do.”  
  
Quinn smiles for a second like she might get why it’s funny and then immediately shoots off another invisible arrow, cheering when it lands at her desired destination, Rachel. Sarah leaves her to it, heading over to the bench to make it very clear she’s done helping the specialist and maybe take a small nap before swimming. She makes a note to buy a travel pillow next time they visit the tuck shop.  
  
It’s hot. Hot enough to wish she’d worn white, and to drift off into sleep on the sun-baked bench almost as soon as she lies down. _You’re not sleeping well_ , Delphine had commented at breakfast. Sarah laughed and asked if it was that obvious but she’s been a walking corpse for days now and she can’t exactly explain that it’s Rachel – it’s knowing she’s awake on the other side of the wall, turning the pages of her book, just as likely to break the silence as Sarah is.  
  
We’re not talking because she read part of her book to me, Sarah keeps imagining herself saying to Delphine and Cosima. As if that’s the reason at all.  
  
She doesn’t even _know_.  
  
Rachel was just this bloody block of ice at breakfast the morning after and Sarah could barely stand the fluorescent lights, let alone saying _thanks_ or _I’m sorry_ or whatever other empty shit she could think of to maybe acknowledge the night before and it just felt better to not. To braid Afsheen’s hair and stare at nothing through her sunglasses and blame it all on Delphine’s cheap wine.  
  
To pretend she still can’t hear Rachel’s soft voice with the full weight of those words.  
  
“I think I’m still a bit sick,” she tells Naomi on the way to swimming, to explain tripping over a tree root she clearly should have seen. Even her feet are betraying her these days.  
  
She’d forgotten it was free swim until seeing half the camp at the lake; there’s a glance to her clipboard to confirm it, and god she’s doing such a shit job of this. Naomi’s thrilled to see her brother again and Sarah can’t even protest when they all ask to set up their towels near Paul’s group, equal parts shy and eager to have their bathing suits on display. She’s sure she’ll hear about new developments on their crushes later tonight.  
  
“You look terrible,” Paul says as the kids run towards the water.  
  
All the noodles and inflatables have been brought out of the shed and sit on the lake like a scattering of rainbow sprinkles; it’s almost tempting to go join them, but she actually put on mascara today for no reason other than to make herself feel a bit better and she doesn’t want to climb out of the lake with raccoon eyes.  
  
“I look great,” she tells him. He takes a seat beside her on the end of her towel and she sighs. “What, not gonna join your girlfriend?”  
  
Alison’s blowing a whistle at some kids from the dock, so Beth’s no doubt somewhere nearby. Sarah glances down the stretch of sand and spies her sitting with some kid who looks equally miserable. Maybe it’s the long-sleeved shirt in this weather.  
  
Paul follows her gaze and then looks back with a surprising amount of remorse. “I did, actually. She told me to find somewhere else to be.”  
  
Sarah realizes the kid’s crying, so it could be that, but Beth just seems to be holding her hand and watching kids splash each other in the shallow part.  
  
“Kid drama?” she says, lifting her shoulders, and Paul nods.  
  
“Yeah, maybe.”  
  
She digs her toes into the sand at the edge of her towel, wondering how different it would have been if he’d just talked to her last summer. If she’d said no but stuck around and they were friends and had each other’s backs. Would she have been so lonely? Would she have even had it in her to say no in the first place?  
  
Maybe she would’ve really liked the guy and the idea’s sour in her mouth. Yeah, like the guy who’s looking for anyone other than his girlfriend. But she kind of gets it, too.  
  
“Alison scares the shit out of me,” he admits as they both watch Alison berate a child for pushing someone off an inflatable tire.  
  
Sarah laughs and the weightlessness of it hurts her chest.  
  
“She just cares,” she says. About the kids, about this camp. She’s trying to preserve what she loved about coming here as a kid; it’s admirable from a distance.  
  
Paul shifts his gaze from Alison to Beth, his mouth pulling tight. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”  
  
It makes sense that he’d have picked up on that, but Sarah still finds herself a little surprised, wanting to tell him no, not like that, wanting to protect all three of them, but she knows she’s the last person who should get involved. None of this is hers to talk about.  
  
He lets it drop anyway, tunneling his foot through the sand towards hers, stopping just before their toes touch. “Our kids are all in love,” he says. She pulls her feet away.  
  
“They’ll forget about it as soon as the summer’s over,” she replies.  
  
They’ll go home and get back to their lives and find new people to care about because nothing sticks forever. Cut their hair and say they’ve changed. Maybe they do; maybe a year’s enough to be a different person, and they’ll come back better.  
  
What was it Felix said when she finally started to unpack? She pictures him sitting on her bed, sweater full of what he calls fashionable holes, twirling a shitty little God’s Eye.  
  
_Well you certainly brought it all back with you_.  
  
Sand pouring out of her shoes, burrs still stuck to her clothes. There were hairs in her hairbrush that weren’t hers.  
  
“She scares me a little too,” Paul’s saying, and when Sarah registers the words she realizes he’s looking right at Rachel – Rachel in a white one-piece that would look clinical on anyone else but somehow gives her skin a warm glow and Sarah’s chest constricts.  
  
_Come play mermaids with us!_ her kids are calling, surrounding her like fish, their faces bright. Rachel takes one expressionless look in Sarah’s direction and follows them to the water.  
  
“What’s it like being stuck with her?” Paul asks. “Is she as much of a bitch as she seems?”  
  
Her hand smacks his leg weakly, not having the energy to do more damage. “That’s not something you can call a girl,” she chastises. She’s still stuck on the image of Rachel in her bathing suit.  
  
He apologizes and tries to rephrase but she gets up and yanks the towel out from under him, heading over to tan near Tony.  
  
“We missed you at last night’s campfire,” is all Tony says, his smile genuine, and she wishes again that he was the elevens counselor. At least she’d have someone to joke around with about their kids’ burgeoning crushes.  
  
She doesn’t even mind when his boys come back later with weeds in their hands, dripping all over her back. In their excitement about finding fish eggs on the plants for their weekly scavenger hunt she almost forgets about Rachel completely.

* * *

  
  
Rachel’s father first introduced her to Camus when she was eight; sat her down on her bed, revealed the book he’d been holding behind his back. She was angry about something – she forgets now, but remembers the feeling of it hot between her teeth – and he handed her a lolly so she’d listen (red, it stained her lips). _I bought this for your mummy_ , he said. She knew what myths were. She even knew about Sisyphus.  
  
It wasn’t the first book she thought to pack – Lolita came, and Nausea, and East of Eden, tucked neatly in the bottom of her suitcase. It was only the incessant chirping of her father’s birds downstairs that compelled her to grab it from the shelf. She wasn’t even sure she’d read it again.  
  
It seems futile to place her books on the shelf in her counselor room, first wiping away a layer of dust, knowing she’ll only be removing them in seven weeks anyway. But it brings her a sense of peace to see the titles lined up together; a small bit of home, whatever that means to her now. They stay there until lights out, when she eyes them from her bed for a full two minutes before sweeping them all back into her suitcase. Tucked under the bed. Completely out of sight.  
  
(What incited her father to introduce it to her _then_?)  
  
She was the witch again as her children ran through the forest after the campfire. Chase us, they pleaded. She didn’t run but they squealed anyway.  
  
(Her mother didn’t want it. She threw it on the ground.)  
  
She can hear them breathing in their sleep; hear the snore through the wall behind her headboard. There’s a chip in the wood of her side table and she runs her thumb across it, again, and again, wanting to smooth it out.  
  
It’s early in the morning when she rises – before the bugle, the sun just creeping up over the lake. She wonders if Beth is out jogging, having caught sight of her on the weekend, loose bits of her bun falling in her face. She wonders if Sarah managed to get to sleep. (She doesn’t.) (Does she?) She aims to fall back asleep for whatever time she has left but when the bugle sounds her eyes are still open, fixed on the book on her bedside table.  
  
She considers, rousing her girls, asking to trade her arts and crafts block with Alison’s tennis; it would involve talking to Alison and throwing Sarah under the bus, and she’s only surprised to find herself afraid of doing one of those.  
  
“We’re doing paper mache,” Raniyah tells her as they clean up their table after breakfast.  
  
“Making what?” Rachel asks. She remembers doing it back in primary school, but there was always some sort of end goal – some lumpy shape to paint and take home.  
  
The girls all seem thrown by the question as if only interested in the messy part of the craft until Julisa finally says, “puppets! We’re making heads for our puppets.”  
  
It’s something to do with their drama project, which has something to do with the talent show, which all seems conflated enough to have everyone even more excited than usual to head to the arts and crafts cabin. Rachel tells herself this is why she doesn’t ask Alison to switch.  
  
She makes a point to get there early, if just to scope it out and find herself a seat away from any chance to get messy. Her girls fill a table of their own and it’s chaotic and relieving in comparison to sharing the art block with Alison –  and she tucks herself away at a back table to get far away from the corner where Alison lectured her, running her fingers over the grooves and carvings on the worn-down wooden tabletop. There are a few initials, a few drawings. Someone’s carved a curse word but done their best to cross it out.  
  
FK indeed, Rachel thinks, as Sarah’s brood comes tumbling through the door.  
  
“Welcome!” The specialist grins. “We’re just about to get started!”  
  
Sarah at least seems equally thrown by her teeth-baring smile so early in the morning. Rachel wishes she’d had a second coffee before leaving the mess hall.  
  
Sarah’s girls saunter, take seats at the table like picking friends. Rachel’s girls follow their actions with earnest faces and she wishes they didn’t worship so openly – it makes it too easy to see the eleven year-olds as more than just Sarah’s unruly campers.  
  
The paste and newspaper strips are set out almost as soon as all the girls are seated, and Rachel expects chaos but doesn’t expect Sarah to come hover near her table as if pointedly _not_ sitting down with her.  
  
She waits for her to say _Thursday night_.

She waits for her to say anything.

“You’ll get a backache if you stay standing like that,” Rachel finds herself saying in their silence, nudging over a chair.

 Sarah stares at it for a moment before tugging it a little closer and finally sitting down, and she’s far enough away to not actually be at the table but Rachel finds her space invaded all the same. Sarah pulls a coffee out of nowhere. Rachel considers kicking the chair.

“They’re making puppets,” she says when she catches Sarah frowning in confusion at the goopy mess on the tables.

It’s the last thing she says for a while, but it at least makes Sarah look at her, at least inspires eye contact, and Rachel can’t stand it.

(Sarah’s exhausted. Sarah looks… Well. Rachel’s heard her up at night.)

They both go back to watching their kids dunk strips of newspaper in the vomit-like paste, pulling them through their fingers to remove the excess, smoothing them over semi-inflated balloons. There’s a yeasty smell in the air that Rachel wasn’t expecting and it stabs her with a sort of nostalgia for the classroom she loved so dearly as a child – the yellow walls and paper garlands and the soft way the teacher said her name.

She shuts her eyes and lets herself feel seven again; lets herself remember England, remember her family intact and not torn apart all jagged by the bitter cold of Canada.

Her mother loved the lumpy piñata she brought home before Easter. They hung it up in a doorway and her mother said it was too beautiful to destroy. Rachel just wanted the sweets inside; her mother was so _mad_ when she found it dissected in the back garden. (Did her mother cry? Or is she confusing it with Canada?)

“I’d be sick if I had to touch that,” Sarah says, stirring Rachel from her reminiscing.

She’s chancing a small smile when Rachel opens her eyes.

“What, you never did it back in school?” Rachel asks. The girls are covered in paste up to their elbows, peeling a little where it’s dried. The specialist grins on.

Sarah shrugs and says, “Never really stuck around anywhere long enough to do any of the fun stuff.”

It’s said with a practiced ease, like she’s so used to putting it on display it doesn’t even strike her as hers anymore. Rachel doesn’t know what to do but nod and look away as Sarah fiddles with the blue and black bracelet around her wrist.

The girls are filling the room with their squeals and chatter anyway, enough of a distraction for the both of them, surely all ready for a dunk in the lake after this. It’s a shame they don’t go swimming until after lunch. Rachel wonders if she can run them all through the shower in fifteen minutes but accepts that they’ll be peeling paste off their hands and arms all through the meal.

Sarah sips her coffee quietly, eyeing the specialist as if challenging her to say something about the rule-breaking possession.

Emily, Rachel thinks her name is. The one too busy running her hands all over the girls’ balloons to ensure they’re smoothing it down correctly. If Rachel could do this at seven they can manage at ten and eleven. It’s going to look terrible anyway, she nearly tells Sarah.

She holds her tongue as she glances over, Sarah sitting with arms crossed and the only color to her face a slight sunburn.

(Sisyphus rolls the rock to the top of the mountain; it rolls back down. She thinks of him following its path to the bottom – the brief freedom of aching arms and blistered palms. The hour of consciousness, Camus called it.)

Sarah’s watching her the next time she looks.

Hair a dark tangle of curls. Mouth held soft.

“D’you ever miss England?” Sarah asks as she looks to Rachel’s painted nails.

Rachel knows there’s a chip in the silver of her index finger and tries to tuck it away without making it obvious. Sarah lifts her shoulders like she was just making light conversation but Rachel knows, instinctively, it’s more than that.

She averts her gaze to the scarred tabletop. “I don’t think about it, really.”

Sarah nods, maybe the same or maybe motioning that she understands. It was a long time ago; they were practically different people. If Rachel ever ran into the child she left behind in Cambridge…

( _You cut your hair because there was no one to braid it. It’s better this way_.)

She’s an adult. There’s no need to look back.

“One week down,” Sarah says as they’re helping the girls clean up, scrubbing hard at a patch of dried paste. She has a child at her elbow and they eye her with slight uncertainty.

Rachel takes a wet paper towel, moving Sarah’s hand aside to set it on the dry glob. “Just let it sit for a little,” she says. “It’ll come up with no work after.”

Messes she can handle. Paste under her nails, fine. She blanches when Sarah gives her an appreciative smile.

“Done this before?” Sarah asks lightly, quietly, moving around Rachel to wet another paper towel at the sink. There’s a brief second of contact as Sarah steadies herself against Rachel’s waist and her fingertips are fire through the fabric.

Rachel swallows hard and goes to croak out a reply but by the time she finds her voice Sarah’s already moved on, laughing by the paint-stained sink with one of her kids.

* * *

 

Later, during quiet hour, Rachel settles in on one of the porch benches with a book, her girls split between their bunks and the shaded parts of the grass. A few of them finally decided to write home and Sierra wanted to shower, the rest opting instead to bring cards and art supplies out to the lawn despite the heat, and Rachel for once doesn’t mind the bubbly sounds of their conversations. If she forgets the words it almost sounds like running water.

It’s a couple degrees cooler on the porch, at least. Out of the sun Rachel feels like she can actually breathe.

She’d been stuck near Sarah again at lunch, neither of them talking and both feigning interest in their girls to not have to acknowledge their proximity, but even with the couple kids and empty bench separating them Rachel could still somehow _feel_ her. The heat of her; the tangible presence. She’d shredded her napkin to bits before realizing and even then it wasn’t enough.

 _What were you expecting_ , she asks herself. The book is open in her lap but she’s staring out at a picnic table.

It isn’t as if Sarah would slide her way down the bench and say the words, say _Thursday night_ like it was real, asking more of Rachel than Rachel can give. No. Sarah can barely look at her.

And isn’t it what she wanted? The girl’s been a pain in her side since the first dirty look, somehow always _there_ when she shouldn’t be, poking and prodding, just asking to be bit. If Rachel’s wanted anything it’s been to rid herself of Sarah.

She tightens her grip on the book as Evie bumbles out the screen door, a torn sheet of paper in her hand. Maybe it will at least look like Rachel’s been reading.

Evie’s pouting, her hair up in a ponytail that Rachel insisted upon this morning, not wanting to see hair in her mouth ever again. She drops herself down on the bench at Rachel’s side and thrusts the paper in her face, letting out a dramatic sigh.

“I can’t write,” she grumbles.

It takes a second for Rachel’s eyes to focus with the paper so close but when they do she sees a series of scrawled sentences amongst scratched out words, barely placed in the lines. Evie gives the sheet a good shake for emphasis.

“Penmanship?” Rachel guesses, recoiling slightly as Evie scowls. “The, ah, content then?”

“It just all sounds stupid,” Evie says, and brings her knees to her chest.

She seems small like this – just a child, and Rachel supposes she is, but in the past week and a bit her girls have come to seem more like fully-formed humans and she’s surprised to find that she’d forgotten. (Of course, she herself was fully-formed at ten, perfectly assimilated to the adult world. Surely her girls are capable of the same.)

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” she says, wanting to get back to pretending to read and staring off in the distance, sighing when Evie smacks her with the paper to get her to read it.

She relents, taking in the words she can make out, piecing together the general sentiment. A letter to parents who love her dearly; who want to know she’s enjoying herself, she’s eating okay, she’s making friends.

(Rachel wrote her father a letter once; she was eleven and she promptly hurled it into the fireplace.)

“What would you like to tell them?” Rachel asks.

The paper lowers slightly, brushing her arm. Evie frowns and stares at her letter and then tucks her knees under her chin.

“I don’t know,” she says, jaw moving strangely over her knee. “That I’m having fun, I guess.”

“Are you?” Rachel asks.

“Yeah.”

“What parts are you enjoying?”

“Art. Swimming. When we get to play our game.”

“When I’m the witch?”

Evie smiles and lifts her head. “Yeah. And when we make smores at the campfire, and doing karaoke.”

“Write that, then,” Rachel tells her, pushing her thumb deeper in the crease of her book as if she might actually read it now. Somehow Camus just isn’t doing it for her today.

Evie takes her paper back and hops off the bench, the worry smoothed out of her face, slipping back inside the screen door with a little _thank-you_. There’s a burst of chatter from inside that dies down when someone climbs onto a bunk and the shower finally turns off and Rachel forces herself to read at least a page.

She thought she’d spend all her free time reading, when she was packing; pictured lounging by the lake with a paperback, the kids nonexistent and not a bug in sight. She’d never been to camp before but it seemed like the kind of place that could be marginally enjoyable in its quiet moments and when she wasn’t angrily avoiding her father she even, a couple times, caught herself looking forward to it.

In her daydreams there weren’t any other counselors. She should have known – she should have remembered how horrible it is to be with anyone her own age and known, instinctively, that Sarah was a possibility. (How could she? How could she even have _guessed_?)

It isn’t as if school passed without incident; that even a part of her thought camp would be different has her stomach tightening.

( _What could you possibly know about what’s good for me_ , she’d tossed at her father the night he first brought it up. He only blinked at her, blinked those stupid, unbearably large eyes as if she was the one with weapon.)

She startles as the screen door opens on the other side of the porch, not quite jumping but still hating herself for reacting all the same.

It had been too quiet even with her kids chatting away on the grass but she wishes for anything else, even silence, when Sarah steps out onto the creaky planks of wood, her hair wet and the soft, dark tendrils dripping down her shirt.

She doesn’t seem surprised to see Rachel but also approaches as if this wasn’t her intention at all, hands nervously picking at the hem of her shirt as she leans against the column a few feet from Rachel. There’s a quick glance to the book in Rachel’s grip and then down at the porch and Rachel forces herself to think about anything but last Thursday.

“Must be good if you’re still reading it,” Sarah says, a hand coming up to brush back her hair.

Tiny droplets land on the railing beside her, disappearing quickly into the wood. Rachel blinks and looks down at the open page. _What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack_ …

“I keep restarting it,” she finds herself saying. “I keep-”

Looking for an answer, for something she should have found nine years ago, maybe, or that doesn’t exist at all, or-

Sarah nods, a small motion. She’s less pale under her sunburnt cheeks, from the heat or just having showered or eating something substantial at lunch. (Rachel was secretly relieved to see her with a burger, after days of coffee and some token attempt at food.)

“That bit you-” Sarah starts, then presses her lips together, uncertain, before finally trying again. “That bit you shared with me, before.”

Rachel holds her breath and moves her chin a fraction of an inch in what’s supposed to be a nod but is still somehow enough for Sarah to continue.

“I just keep thinking about it,” she says, and reaches behind her to curl a hand around the edge of the railing.

 _Are we finally talking about this_ , Rachel wants to ask, wants to stand up to match her in height, to at least do something other than sit here with her ankles crossed and wait for her chest to cave in on itself.

But Sarah shakes her head and then turns to watch the kids play in the grass, card games abandoned for cartwheels even in the heat with a tenacity that Rachel admires.

“If you ever want to borrow it, to read it,” Rachel hears herself offering, motioning with the open book.

Her father’s annotations are on display in the margins for anyone to see and she hates his handwriting and wonders and knows why she hasn’t already erased it. Of course he’d find significance in the lines that struck her too.

Sarah turns back around slowly, the slightest awe in her eyes that puts something heavy in Rachel’s stomach.

“I don’t think I’d understand it,” she says, ducking her head and running a hand through her wet curling hair in a fluid movement.

Rachel considers it for a second and then says, quietly, “I don’t know, I think you might surprise yourself.”

One of Sarah’s girls picks this moment to come barreling out of the cabin, screaming her name with another loudly apologetic girl on her heels. Sarah rolls her eyes and heads over to deal with it but Rachel sticks on the glimpse of something soft she’d seen only a minute before, a shift in her gaze, that lingers even after Sarah’s gone. 

* * *

 

Sarah lets her kids sit wherever the hell they want for movie night, paying attention long enough to note where they scatter and then joining Cosima and Delphine with their brood of tiny urchins.

They’re strategically far enough away from Beth to not attract Alison’s attention but also not too close to Paul, who gives Sarah a quick glance before returning to his conversation with Tony and seems to understand she’d rather eat glass than have him come over. He has a couple of her girls in with his boys, Naomi and Raya and a shy Ava, the three of them laughing with Naomi’s brother, looking happy enough for Sarah to not be concerned. She’s sure they could hold their own if any of the boys started to bother them.

It’s a calmer night than usual; she doesn’t know if it’s the heat or just that they’re all finally settling into the routine, but even the din of everyone together doesn’t have the same frantic edge to it that she’s come to expect and she doesn’t have to keep scanning the room to keep an eye on things.

(She knows where Beth is, anyway. Near the front, leaning against a shelving unit, listening to Alison go on and on about something clearly not as exciting as Alison’s making it out to be.)

“I actually really like Toy Story,” Cosima says, hand intertwined with Delphine’s on the floor between them.

Sarah looks up from the blonde hair she’s been braiding, one of Delphine’s sixes having asked the moment she sat down. The hair’s almost too thin for a French braid but she’s managing.

“You just like Bo Peep,” she says, grinning.

Cosima’s eyes widen and she glances to Delphine before giving Sarah a dirty look.

“It was a _dream_ ,” she hisses.

Delphine glances between them and then laughs, putting the pieces together with Sarah’s smug expression.

“You know,” Sarah says, innocently returning to the braid, “Bo _does_ seem to resemble a certain hot, French girlfriend of yours, if you think about about it…”

She expects the smack, Cosima reaching around Delphine to do so, but it still jars her body a little and she nearly loses her grip on one of the strands of the braid. If the entire thing unraveled she would have slapped the _shit_ out of Cosima, even with all these little kids around them.

Delphine seems ready to say something to mediate just as the lights dim, one of the lifeguards finally getting the projector going. A cheer rises up through the crowd. Paul and Tony sit down, joining their boys, and Sarah finds herself watching Beth do the same, hand bumping Alison’s as they sink to the floor in unison. She half hopes Paul didn’t see it and half hates herself for caring.

The kid in front of her wiggles back until she’s sitting in her lap, almost too close to finish the end of the braid but with just enough space for Sarah to tie it off and hand the tail of it to her with a whispered _there, just like Elsa_. The girl tilts her head back to smile at her, snuggling in for the movie.

Man, Delphine and Cosima have it easy. The smallest slice of attention and their kids worship them. Sarah looked at Quinn wrong this morning and had to duck to avoid a hairbrush.

(It’s been a little better, but with Daniela now fighting back at Raya’s insistence it’s more like playing referee in a knife fight. She mostly has to figure out how to dodge and when it’s absolutely necessary for her to step in.)

“I think Chloe likes you,” Delphine whispers in her ear, smiling down at the girl in Sarah’s lap.

Sarah crinkles her nose but smiles back. “They’d like anyone who braided their hair.”

“Oh, not Alison,” Delphine replies and Sarah tries to muffle her laugh.

Alison braiding hair would probably be all hard tugs and admonishments, her nails sharp as razors against their soft scalps. Sarah cringes at the thought and smoothes her hand over the top of Chloe’s head.

She does her best to focus on the heat and weight of the body in her lap and not on the movie playing out on the screen, really not feeling tonight’s selection. Maybe it has to do with seeing all these movies years after everyone else but she never quite got the hype. A bunch of toys are actually alive and willingly obey their sheriff? Some evil boy has a go at vivisection?

She watched it a few times for Felix when he was younger, pretending to worry as much as he did when they had to find their way to the moving van. But mostly she just quietly hated that Andy’s whole life wasn’t traveling with him in a trash bag, no social worker eyeing him through the rearview mirror, getting to drive to his new home without a thick knot of dread in his stomach.

“I’m gonna go pee,” she tells Delphine after Chloe slides back onto the floor, and dips out of the rec hall as fast as she can manage.

The temperature’s dropped to something comfortable, finally, cooling her skin as she leans against a nearby tree. It might rain, actually – she can smell static, the trees all bristling in a slight evening breeze, something coming up from the lake. Maybe if a storm hits they won’t have to go kayaking tomorrow. She crosses her fingers against her thigh.

“You okay, girl?”

She jumps as a body comes out of the shadows beside the rec hall but eases a little as she sees it’s Tony, zipping up his fly.

“Not a big Disney person,” she tells him with a shrug, pushing off the tree so she doesn’t look as pathetic.

He shrugs as well, meeting her halfway in the small yellow glow of one of the porch lights.

“Not everyone is. Maybe you could suggest something for next time, something you’d actually enjoy?” His smile would look slimy on anyone else but on him it’s comforting.

She chuckles. “Kinda more into bad horror flicks. Not that camp-appropriate.”

“Shit, now that’s my kind of girl,” he says with a grin, a hand touching her arm.

It’s brief and cheeky, and she likes the way he looks at her after, like he’s daring her to call him out. She shakes her head with a smile, wishing again that it’d been him instead of Paul. For so many things. 

“Are you coming out tonight?” he asks. “Fire pit? Krystal’s bringing some fruity shit.”

Of course she is, Sarah thinks. There isn’t a girly drink Krystal doesn’t love. Sarah almost wishes she lived close enough to Krystal to go drinking with her on a regular basis, trying all the sugary crap she’s always been too embarrassed to buy on her own. Krystal might not even be too bad to have around for a hangover. She seems like she’d know a few cures.

“Kinda thought I’d just go to bed,” she tells Tony, trying to sound regretful. “You know, still being a little sick.”

He looks genuinely disappointed but also concerned enough about her wellbeing to not try to sway her and she half regrets using the easy excuse. But it’s not like she’s going to tell him she can’t come because she doesn’t want to drunkenly return to her cabin after. (To find out Rachel waited up for her. To find out Rachel didn’t.)

“It’s hitting you pretty hard then, huh?” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Uh,” she says, “yeah, you know, body’s not used to being around all these little germ factories.”

Her body’s not used to being around _Rachel_ , and she hates herself for even thinking it.

“Well,” Tony says.

She gives him a helpless, self-deprecating smile, the one she saves for boys when she needs to slip through the fingers of their conversation.

“Want me to walk you back in?” he offers, gesturing towards the door.

They’ve probably missed enough of the movie at this point for her to be able to convince herself she hasn’t been following the plot. It’s so much easier to watch when it’s all disjointed scenes and too bright colors.

He holds out his arm like a goddamn gentleman and she accepts, smiling, enjoying just getting to be another girl around him. Not Paul’s mistake. Not Beth’s enemy. Just a girl with a boy.  

Cosima looks up with slight concern as Sarah rejoins them, slipping into her spot beside Delphine without disturbing the stretched out kids around her. She waves a hand at Cosima to tell her it’s nothing, just needed air, just got bored, something easy, and Cosima relents, letting Sarah inch close enough to Delphine to focus solely on the spiced floral scent of her perfume, hopefully not even going to bring it up later.

She can’t even tell what’s happening on the screen.

It feels good, for a moment. For a second before her head turns involuntarily and she catches sight of Rachel, face unguarded as she watches the movie, shrouded in something sad.

And then Sarah drops her head into her hands and rubs her eyes, letting out a silent groan, wishing she hadn’t had to see such a human expression on Rachel, her chest aching as it burns itself into her vision. She’ll be seeing it on repeat in her dreams tonight, a new face to the nightmarish mix from last Thursday and every terrible conversation she’s imagined since.

Rachel’s sad eyes. Rachel glancing up from her book. Rachel’s sneer. Rachel reading. Soft and harsh and haunting and cruel – she tastes blood in her mouth every morning, and in the first seconds after waking she always wonders if it’s hers or Rachel’s.

* * *

 

  
It’s cool enough to justify a sweatshirt when Sarah slips out after her girls are asleep, a baggy grey university one she nicked from some guy she’s since forgotten. The lining is soft and she relishes getting to stick her hands in the pocket, fingers cradling the pack of smokes, pointedly _not_ thinking about Rachel as she plods through the forest.

She doesn’t mean to run into Beth again. (Mostly. Of course she knew Beth would be at the lake, but mostly she let herself forget.)

She doesn’t mean to fumble with the cigarette as she’s lighting it, nearly dropping it in the sand, her hands shaking for some reason as Beth watches her.

 _I’ll go_ , she silently offers, perched for flight with sand in her shoes, but Beth shakes her head, subtle, and there’s enough space for the both of them on the boathouse dock. Sarah sits beside her and tries not to blow smoke in her face. Beth… sits.

The water trembles slightly with the breeze, a sure sign of rain on its way; there’s a snap to the air that Sarah can’t figure out if she likes or not and it’s whisked a dampness into the wood under her bare thighs. At the very least it’s keeping the mosquitoes at bay, hovering in a thin cloud over the middle of the lake.

Beth’s breathing is audible tonight, shifting the fabric of a grey Henley Sarah’s fairly certain she’s seen on Alison before, which still doesn’t tell her who actually owns it. Maybe they’re both wearing stolen tops tonight. Or maybe it’s some coded admission for the dark only, and Sarah shouldn’t be here putting the facts together with all their blurry edges.

She focuses on the pull of smoke in her chest and watches it curl into nothing in front of her.

 _Are you even mad at me_ , she doesn’t ask. Knowing wouldn’t change anything.

 _Listen_ \- she goes to say, but she hears it in Paul’s voice and she has nothing to follow it anyway. Just the need to fill the silence, to have Beth acknowledge her in some small way. It would be so much easier if Beth could just slap her.

She told Felix about their last conversation, about telling her about Vic. He got it in a way she didn’t want him to and asked how she felt and she said okay, for having to be that girl again, even for a split second. He asked if she told Beth because she knew Beth wouldn’t spread it around, and that might have been why but mostly, she told him, it was because she felt like she’d taken too much from Beth already and just had to give her _something_. Something that hurt in the same awful way.

Beth glances at her now like she knows what she’s thinking about, her eyes cold in a forgiving way. In an absent way.

For a second Sarah feels like reaching out and taking her hand to see if she’s even there at all or if she’s just an apparition in the dead of night but then something eases in Beth’s face, a slight softening, and Sarah brings the cigarette to her mouth again to have something to do with her hands.

“Why’d you take Rachel’s cigarettes,” Beth asks.

Sarah exhales. The smoke hovers like a ghost between them.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Because she let me.”

Beth nods and hair falls in her eyes, all barely contained by the loose bun at the back of her head. She doesn’t move to fix it and Sarah can’t bear to look at it cutting her pale skin so she forces herself to stare at the water under her feet like there’s anything more to it than darkness.

God, not even the stars are out tonight.

They sit in absolute silence until Sarah’s cigarette burns down to the filter, and she grinds it out against the dock and Beth watches and then rises and says goodbye as she’s already going, just a blur amongst the trees. Sarah wonders if she’ll ever be the first to leave.  

She thinks about Beth as she crawls into bed after, the sheets cool against her legs; thinks about the last time she saw her smile and how much of a shell it is compared to even a year ago.

In the dark of her room she can almost conjure up an imaginary Beth in the corner, just beside the dresser, standing with her arms crossed and watching Sarah with that usual mix of detachment and disappointment. _What happened to you_ , she pictures herself asking, head still on the pillow, watching Beth in return. Beth would lift her shoulders and shake her head, and there’d be a quirk of her lips that should be a smile but just _isn’t_ on Beth, and in the static texture of the darkness Sarah would almost believe she could touch her, just reach out and brush her fingers against her skin.

_I didn’t know you when I slept with Paul. I’m sorry._

_Sarah, you don’t know me now_.

“Sarah?”

Her foot kicks involuntarily under her blanket and as her eyes adjust she sees a kid in the crack of her doorway, nearly swallowed whole by the shadows.

The door opens a little more and it’s Naomi, hair still damp from her shower earlier, hesitantly taking a step into the room. Sarah rubs some sleep out of her eyes and motions for her to come closer.

“What’s up?” she asks, quiet, to not wake the other girls.

It has to be pretty late; she’s not going to turn to check her phone, but her body feels heavy in a way that tells her she’s at least been sleeping for a little while and it wasn’t exactly early when she headed down to the lake.

Naomi tucks her hair behind her ear, creeping forward until she hits Sarah’s bed, not sitting down until Sarah pats the blanket.

“I want to go home,” she says, and Sarah can hear the tears she’s trying to hold back.

Sarah half props herself up on an elbow to look a little more present in this conversation. “Are you missing your family?”

Naomi nods and puts a hand over her face, saying tearfully, “and my bed, and my dog, and getting to be in my kitchen in the morning…”

There’s a beat before she’s really crying, but her shoulders tremble and Sarah can barely get herself to a sitting position in time to give her a hug. Naomi sinks into her chest like this was all she really needed, some form of human contact; Sarah strokes her damp hair and tells her it’s okay to miss all this, it’s okay to be sad.

“We can call home in the morning,” Sarah says, rubbing her back. “Maybe see if your brother can join us for breakfast. You’re lucky to have him here, you know. Every time I get sad about anything I just want to be with my brother.”

Naomi wipes her cheeks, nodding, and sits up enough to be able to see her. “Is he your best friend? Nate’s my best friend.”

“He is,” Sarah says, lips curling in a little smile.

“Is your sister too?” Naomi asks and looks at her earnestly, her eyes still glassy.

Sarah exhales. “Well you know, I don’t exactly know her. She grew up really far away and I haven’t had the chance to get to know her that well. She likes candy, though. And kids. She’d like working with you guys.”

Naomi considers this for a minute and runs her fingers along Sarah’s, a chill to her touch.

“Did your mom give you up?” she asks quietly. “When you were babies?”

Her finger lands in a groove between Sarah’s knuckles and she presses down against the skin. Sarah wonders if she can feel the tiny scar there, where it split from trying to fight back, her hands too small to do much damage.

“She couldn’t take care of us,” she replies. Her voice rasps and she blames it on having been asleep.

Naomi’s face softens in concern. “So she gave you to two different homes?”

Not at first, Sarah’s learned, but even with babies people tend to only want one, especially with a pair that only knew how to cry.

“That’s just how the system works sometimes,” she tells her, reaching out to wipe away a tear streak.

“I’d be really sad if they separated me and Nate,” Naomi says, frowning in a way that says she’s going to be thinking about this for a while, and Sarah wishes she had a life that wouldn’t make her kids worry. “Sometimes… sometimes I can feel him thinking, even in a different room, and I know what he’s thinking about without him telling me. Like his head is inside my head.”

Sarah nods and smoothes down a wrinkle in Naomi’s pyjama top, trying not to think about Helena. “Twins can have a very special connection, sometimes. It’s a deep bond.”

“I came out first, you know,” Naomi tells her. “They cut my mom open because Nate was struggling, but I was right there, and I was fine.”

There’s a slight guilt to the way she says it and Sarah wants to tell her nothing’s her fault, there’s no way she had control over any of that, but Naomi just lifts her shoulders and lets them fall and it’s as if she’s accepted it a long time ago. That she came out first and she was fine.

“I think I’m okay to go back to bed now,” she says, giving Sarah a decisive nod and then sliding off the bed, any evidence that she’d been crying eaten up by the dark.

“Yeah?” Sarah says. “We can chat a little longer, if you need.”

“It’s okay, I’m good to go sleep,” Naomi assures her.

She lets Sarah hug her and wish her sweet dreams before she goes, and at the doorway she makes sure they can still call her mom in the morning, but as soon as she’s in bed she doesn’t stir once and in the quiet Sarah half convinces herself the entire thing was some dream to make her feel better about being such a shitty counselor these past few days. It would be just like her subconscious to seek out a situation to fluff her ego. If it can do it while also dredging up the past, all the better.

It’s a small consolation, being forced to think about her sister, but when she finally does get to sleep it’s the first time in a while her dreams are perforated with anything other than Rachel. And in the morning, she swears it was almost a rest.

* * *

 

The rain starts at some point in the night, easing up a little to let the morning bugle be heard but carrying on full force after as if determined to swallow up the day. The upside is it’s given Rachel a chance to wear one of her long-sleeved shirts, a soft olive green top that pairs nicely with her mood, the air almost chilly even in the cabin.

Her girls seem to be of the same line of thinking – nearly all of them opt for sweatshirts or long sleeves, Marlow and Raniyah even sporting pants. They have ponchos and raincoats with them as well, thankfully adhering to the packing lists, making it a little easier to travel in the downpour, giving them the appearance of small ladybugs and frogs and cheerful ducks with their matching rain boots. (If Rachel had known raingear came in anything other than drab she might have thought to bring more than an umbrella and a light jacket she’s saving for a hurricane.)

It’s a sea of oddly colorful raincoats when they get to the mess hall, everyone either dripping or in the process of drying off as they shout their conversations at each other. It might be a combination of the rain drumming on the roof or knowing they’ll be trapped inside all day but everyone seems a little more erratic, a little louder than usual, each table apparently trying to drown out the rest.

This would not be the day to have a hangover.

Rachel glances at Sarah just in case, but Sarah has a bowl of oatmeal with her coffee today and looks to be somewhat well-rested, in some conversation with Madeleine that has a soft smile on her face.

“What are we doing instead of soccer today?” Sierra asks, drawing her attention away from the other half of the table.

Rachel asked the same thing at the staff meeting this morning, one of the only counselors there in anything other than pyjamas and the only one who managed to miss six of the seven days of orientation week. It was a quick meeting; updated schedules were handed out while the director warned them of a new patch of poison ivy near the tennis courts, and Paul and Tony asked if they could still do some sport activity if there wasn’t any lightening.

“I’m afraid we’re stuck inside, some dance activity with the nine year-olds,” she tells Sierra as she taps some crumbs off her toast.

And drama with Alison’s group, and games in the mess hall later with the nine year-old boys and seven year-old girls. Rainy days are apparently a hodgepodge of _whatever we can do inside_. The plus side is she did manage to snag her group some time in the arts and crafts cabin later, for the counselor-led activity, to do something she’s yet to figure out. But it beats being stuck in their cabin.

Sierra makes the face that Rachel had wanted to when she got her schedule.

“Last year when it rained we played Twister for like, an hour,” Isabella C. says, frowning at Clementine who nods emphatically.

Rachel tries to hide a smile. “Well that’s on the schedule for this afternoon, unfortunately. But I’m sure there will be some other games to choose from.”

“We played Monopoly too,” Clementine says as she chases scrambled egg around her plate. “Beth beat _everyone_. Like, she owned the _entire board_.”

It makes sense that her returning girls would have been with Beth last summer, but it hadn’t exactly occurred to Rachel until now. Part of her wants to ask what that was like, being with Beth, if she was just as numb and withdrawn as she seems to be now, but she knows that would be inappropriate. Mostly she tries to wrap her head around the image of Beth having enough interest in a board game to win it.

She goes to sneak a glance at Beth to see how she is with her current group of kids, but Alison nearly catches her looking and she’d rather not be on the receiving end of a scathing look so early in the morning.

“Do you like board games, Rachel?” Sahar asks, her voice still sleep-coated, frog raincoat half falling off her shoulders.

Rachel wants to reach out and brush back the mess of dark hair that’s sticking out the frog hood or maybe take off the raincoat entirely, let it dry on the bench beside her like most of her girls, but she refrains from doing anything but giving her a small smile in return.

“I’ve enjoyed myself playing a couple, yes,” she says, and Sahar smiles back.

When her family was still intact she’d insist on The Game of Life, wanting to collect a carful of little pink daughters and maybe a son and be a doctor and the first to the end and watch the stretch of life grow more fruitful each turn. She’d play alone, sometimes; cheat so she got everything she wanted, even naming her children, lonely in a way she couldn’t describe. 

Her parents always chose Scrabble. Or Boggle. Or anything to exercise their minds, they said, and she agreed, she learned to agree, trying to find joy in the first time she beat her mother’s score. And then her father’s. And she wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be having fun after all.

Sahar tilts her head and watches her for a moment, as if maybe she can see the small girl and the Scrabble board. Spelling out i-s-o-l-a-t-e. Spelling out p-l-e-a-s-e. (She’s thinking of Canada again. She bites down hard on her cheek.) And then it’s gone and Sahar’s back to her cereal, the marshmallows bloated in the greying milk, and Rachel has blood in her mouth that stains the rim of her coffee cup. 

She thinks of red lipstick. (She thinks of her mother.)

“I bet you’d be good at Twister,” Isabella C. says, and Raniyah adds, “Beth hated it.”

Rachel clasps her hands together, forcing a smile onto her lips. “Well, we’ll see this afternoon then, won’t we?”

It’s always been a game for birthday parties, for little girls in their socks with bows in their hair. It’s a game of flexibility and as she carefully turns to sneak a look at Beth she knows, blinking at her rigid form, this is why it wasn’t for Beth. (She bets Sarah’s good at it. And then she presses her fingertips against her cheek, right where she bit down.)

The girls go back to their breakfast and Rachel goes back to trying to de-crumb her toast and it’s almost as if the conversation never happened, lost to the pounding of the rain on the roof above them. But Rachel keeps finding herself thinking of it later – of the girls with their raincoats, and of Beth as anything other than the solemn frame she is now. Like some lost puzzle piece that still has no image to go with it.

* * *

 

It turns out Beth has about as much enthusiasm for dance as Rachel does: the two of them have been sitting on the bench “observing” since the specialist turned on some upbeat music that Alison would no doubt enjoy and started to break down the routine, both deciding their help is clearly not needed.  

Their kids are pretty evenly matched in terms of talent, but most of them seem to be enjoying it, Sahar once again having no difficulties in adapting with her limp. Of course most of them are focused on watching themselves in the long stretch of mirror that breaks up the wood paneling, but at least they’re in the general area of moves they’re supposed to be doing. Rachel feels confident enough in the specialist’s leadership skills to pay minimal attention.

“We haven’t met officially,” Beth had said to her upon them all shedding their raingear when they first stumbled into the rec hall, extending her hand in a surprisingly firm handshake. “I’m Beth. Childs. I’m sure you’ve seen me around.”

Rachel had echoed her own name with the same even tone, taken aback by the assertiveness of the move and wondering if in another life they might have been associates or even some type of friends. She briefly imagined having known her in high school, the two of them roaming the halls together in sharply clicking heels, but then decided Beth most likely would have found herself someone like Paul in whatever universe and would still be untouchably sad.

She’s thinking about it again while sitting beside her on the bench, close enough to reach out and brush her hand against Beth’s knee if she so pleased. Rachel sat down first so Beth was the one who chose to leave so little space between them and Rachel still doesn’t know what to make of that. Is she really not a threat? Is this some obvious statement?

Really Beth’s just sitting with her chin in her hand, elbow resting on her knee, hair clipped out of her face and still damp from the rain. Not at all concerned with Rachel’s presence beside her.

Rachel pictures them in a classroom somewhere, their desks touching and easily the smartest two in the class. She’s sure Beth’s handwriting is neat and boxy, and can see her taking organized notes in a plain, lined notebook. They wouldn’t talk. Beth would just sit there and draw nothing in the margins, and Rachel would wonder if she’d missed something when Beth’s notes were longer and more in-depth, and it’d be another missed connection Rachel would lament upon graduating. God, does she have enough of those.

“I think Abby has two left feet,” Beth says quietly, face turned slightly in Rachel’s direction, motioning to one of her kids who’s stumbling through the choreography.

Rachel smiles lightly and nods, and then not wanting the conversation to die adds, “I’m not sure I’d be much better.”

It pulls Beth’s lips out into something _almost_ like a smile, and Rachel considers it a small victory.

But then the silence falls again and they’re back to not really watching their kids laugh and muck up the moves and clutch their friends as they bump into them, the room filled with the pounding music and a curtain of rain through the windows. Beth seems content to just sit; to watch her girls and the rain, and every so often look over at Rachel without making any excuses for her outright observation.

If it were anyone else Rachel might mind the feeling of eyes on her skin, but Beth does it in such a way it feels like nothing at all. A slight breeze, maybe. The ghost of something brushing by.

They speak one more time just as Beth’s group is leaving – Beth slips on her navy blue rain jacket and gives Rachel a slight nod, saying, _nice to finally meet you, Rachel_ , and it’s quiet enough that Rachel nearly misses it, but she holds onto the words as Beth’s group filters out and Alison’s filters in and the chaos settles into a familiar wall of noise she can easily tune out. Maybe Beth’s heard things about her and maybe she hasn’t (although considering her last run-in with Alison, Beth probably has) but it feels like Beth waited to make a judgment of her own, and Rachel passed whatever test Beth had given her.

It’s enough to tolerate the sour look Alison fixes her with as their girls are split into groups for improv and all throughout the inane scenes they’re forced to watch and applaud. Enough to ignore the tiny sounds of disapproval Alison makes as Rachel sits down, back on the bench where Beth had been, deciding Alison will participate enough for the both of them.

And maybe – briefly – she understands: why Alison is the way she is, always needing to be concerned about her _friend_.

Watching her tense up as a group on stage acts out a child’s interpretation of a breakup, their tiny faces crumbling into exaggerated pain. Watching her hand tuck under her chin, trying to fold her emotions into something proper. There can’t be much room for anything outside of worry, Rachel considers. Worry and needing to organize everything she possibly _can_ control.

(Maybe Rachel felt the same, when her mother-)

Clementine pretends to cry on stage and Alison breathes out like she’d been waiting for just this moment and Rachel presses her hand against the warm bench next to her, focusing hard on the feeling of the varnished grain and nothing else.

* * *

 

The rain is coming down in absolute _sheets_ when they make their way to the mess hall that afternoon, and Rachel laments only having her umbrella as she tries to sop up the wetness and flecks of mud from her bare legs with stolen napkins. Her sleeves are soaked, something she didn’t consider from only ever using an umbrella in between buildings and vehicles back in the city, everything about her unpleasantly damp, and the raincoats tossed over a table to dry seem to be mocking her; grinning ducks and frogs and one bright bumblebee, all eyeing her like she’s so embarrassingly _not_ cut out for this.

(And maybe it has something to do with the way Cosima’s looking at her as well, arriving a surprising five minutes after Rachel and completely dry under her rainbow-colored poncho.)

It’s essentially two hours of board games and puzzles, the contents of a giant metal cabinet spread out across one of the long tables, Rudy taking it upon himself to rig them up with some half decent music from the kitchen’s boombox.

It could be worse, Rachel tells herself, her girls thrilled to fawn over the seven year-olds, putting her unbearably close to Cosima. She could be stuck with Sarah. Or she could be stuck with Sarah and _Paul_ , and have to witness their disgusting attempts to flirt with each other while Sarah pretends to not be interested. She tells herself this mainly to feel better about Cosima staring at her, lazily sorting out Monopoly money into their rightful slots and nodding every so often at the story one of her girls is telling her.

Rachel’s still trying to rub off some of the dried mud, conceding to rolling up her sleeves to let her arms dry, not one of her children wanting to play with her now that they have little girls and the nine year-old boys to bother.

If she was concerned with what Cosima thought it might not look too good, but mostly she’s trying to be happy she doesn’t have to get involved in the Twister game that Rudy’s overseeing at the end of the tables. Falling on top of a child while getting her socks dirty is _not_ her idea of a good time. She’s with Beth on this one.

“So does it not rain that much where you’re from?” Cosima asks, the girl at her side now occupied with the tiny Monopoly figurines.

It’s said with a smile that would seem friendly to anyone else and Rachel resists the urge to scowl.

“There certainly isn’t this much mud,” Rachel bites back, deciding not to bother schooling her features into something outwardly harmless. “And there certainly isn’t any need to be outside for more than five minutes at a time." 

Cosima nods and considers that, her smile faltering slightly before she politely pulls it wider. “City girl, then?” she asks, and when Rachel nods she pries, “Which one?”

The child grows bored with the contents of the Monopoly box and moves on to join a game of Candyland with Sierra and two of the younger girls. They’re sitting on the floor between tables, Sierra talking slowly and excruciatingly clear as if the girls might not understand her otherwise and Rachel faintly wishes she could take two or maybe three of her campers for the remainder of the summer and just ditch the rest. They’re such a bother.

She redirects her attention to Cosima, who’s waiting with her stupid fanged smile and elbows on the table as if this is the most interesting thing in the room right now. (Rudy’s going wild with the Twister spinner, tapping it to the beat of the music, but Rachel doesn’t really feel like giving him the attention he so clearly desires.)

“Toronto,” she says in a bored tone. “Cambridge before that, until I was eight.”

Cosima’s eyes widen a little as if she’s given her some revelation. “Dude. You know Sarah’s from Toronto too? Have you guys like, ever met before?”

It’s a city of _millions_ , Rachel feels like telling her, and she certainly wouldn’t go near the places where Sarah’s likely to hang out, but the new knowledge sits heavy in her stomach. All this time, she could have been stuck with the ingrate. They could have passed each other on the street. The rare occasions Rachel took the subway, she might have shared a train with the worst possible person.

She actually shivers.

“It’s quite a large city,” she settles on saying to Cosima, not wanting to continue down this line of thought.

She also doesn’t want to learn anything else about Cosima, so turning this interrogation around on her would be fruitless.

Cosima seems content enough to let it die out anyway, turning her attention to the kids for a while before finally taking notice of Rudy leading a group of campers in what looks to be the wave while they contort their bodies on the Twister mat.

“What the fuck,” Cosima mutters under her breath, glancing at Rachel to see if she took offence. “Sorry, it’s just like- I don’t even know. He’s such a weird… Loose cannon, you know?”

Rachel doesn’t, not really having had to interact with him until now, and even so they haven’t spoken a word, but she gives Cosima a nod regardless as his behavior doesn’t seem to refute her comment. He isn’t someone she’d feel comfortable leaving her girls with, that’s for sure. But she’d say that of about half the camp staff as well.

Sahar comes up to her a second later, ignoring Cosima’s kind smile in a move that fills Rachel’s chest with warmth. She has a box in her arms, clutched to her chest, and steps over Sierra to show her, saying, “Rachel, they have The Game of Life! See?”

She holds it out like it’s some precious treasure and Rachel wishes the updated design on this particular box didn’t cause something in her to constrict. She’d told her at lunch, offhandedly, of all the times she’d played it with her parents, after an unnervingly long discussion on Chutes & Ladders that both she and Sahar had opted to tune out. ( _What’s your favorite,_ Sahar had asked, looking at her like she hung the moon. Of all moments to tell the truth.)

“I see,” she says, stiffening on the bench as Sahar climbs on next to her.

“We can play it,” Sahar says, setting about opening it up, removing the contents like dissecting some dead animal. “What color do you like to be? Can I be green?”

“Sure,” Rachel says, and, “white,” and Sahar hands her the white car like it’s a glittering diamond.

Cosima’s watching them with her tongue tucked between her teeth, her smile caught somewhere between interested and conveniently frozen. The polite thing to do would be invite her to play as well, but Rachel can barely bring herself to play with Sahar let alone with someone whose presence will definitely tarnish the game’s memory. Cosima seems like the type to win everything she plays, anyway. Rachel would rather not deal with that today.

“Marlow wants to play too,” Sahar says, deciding for the both of them as she waves Marlow over.

“Can I be the blue car?” she asks as she sits down on Cosima’s side of the table. “No wait, red. I like red best. Actually I like orange, but not that orange.”

Sahar frowns at her for a second before flicking the red car at her and then goes back to setting up the board.

She gives the spinner a good spin to test it out, the sound something Rachel hasn’t heard in a long time; it gives her an odd pang of nostalgia, something tangy and sore, as if she’s listening to her mother’s heels hit the floorboards above her. She could almost be seven again, playing quietly in the living room as her mother gets ready for a night out. She can almost smell the perfume, taste the lipstick her mother let her put on before sending her downstairs to get ready for the sitter – the waxy feeling as she runs her tongue along it, and her mother laughs and snaps in the same breath, and she sends the spinner twirling into oblivion just to drown it out.

Maybe they should play Scrabble; Rachel would spell out u-s-e-l-e-s-s and bite her cheek as she racked up the points.

“You know I never really got the point of this game,” Cosima says, leaning in. Rachel feels like telling her to go find her own kids to bother. “Is it supposed to show you how short life is? Or how it really doesn’t matter what you do, you land where you land?”

Marlow glances at her with a ten year-old’s disdain.

“It’s just supposed to be fun,” Sahar says.

“You get to have kids,” Marlow adds.

Cosima nods with the slightest hint of alarm, telling them, “Yeah, but there’s so much more to life than that. Like school, and good careers. You could be scientists!”

Sahar blinks at her but Marlow catches on to Rachel’s amused smile and turns to Cosima with wide, innocent eyes.

“But I just want to be a mommy and stay home with my babies all day,” she tells her. “Working is for my _husband_.”

Cosima’s hands freeze in the air, her mouth open slightly as she tries to compute what she’s just heard. It looks as if she might actually explode until Marlow dissolves into giggles, bringing Sahar with her, the two of them laughing as Cosima realizes what just happened.

“I’m just kidding, I’m totally going to be a forensic pathologist. Like CSI,” Marlow says, grinning. Sahar seems a little lost so Marlow adds, “I get to look at dead bodies.”

Rachel wonders if it’s possible to care about _two_ campers, trying to stuff down the pride that’s filling her chest as Marlow smiles to herself and Cosima tries to limit her delight to a calm _that’s awesome, dude_.

“My mom has all the CSIs on DVD,” Marlow tells Cosima, happy to please another counselor, her feet swinging under the table.

“Do you like science classes at school?” Cosima asks. “You’ll need to know a lot of science stuff to get to your dream job. But that’s great that you know what you want to be.”

Marlow tells her about some of the experiments she did in fourth grade and Cosima seems thrilled to be the audience for this. Sahar looks up at Rachel, her green car small in her hand and the pink figure in it hanging on for dear life.

“I don’t know what I want to be,” she says to Rachel, sounding quietly unsure.

Rachel has her car in her hand as well and suddenly feels quite childish for it, setting it down on the table in front of her to make it look like she’s more equipped to be having this conversation. It’s strange, all of a sudden being the adult in the room, having a child look to her the way she’s sure she looked to the adults around her before she learned better. She hasn’t felt like a child for a long time, but it’s strange finally being seen as an adult.

“Most people don’t have any idea what they want to be at your age,” she tells Sahar. “Even in college there are a lot of people who still don’t know. And that’s entirely okay.”

Sahar frowns. “But then how do you get a job? And live your life?”

Cosima glances over as if offering to step in any time, not sure if Rachel can handle this one. Marlow’s still going on about light and sound and using prisms so Rachel gives her head a small shake and focuses on Sahar who’s watching her like she has all the answers in the world.

“You can have myriad different jobs before you find one you like,” Rachel says. “Or you can find happiness in other parts of your life: your family, your hobbies perhaps. Many people prefer that to focusing on their careers.”

She doesn’t want to tell her most people have jobs simply to survive, not ready to destroy a child’s image of the universe just yet.

Cosima seems impressed by her answers and gives her a tiny thumbs up, subtle enough to not cause Marlow to think she’s not paying attention, but Rachel does her best to ignore it. She doesn’t need Cosima’s approval. She has, after all, spent time with her younger cousins before. And honestly talking to most people in high school was like talking to children.

Sahar finds comfort in the answer, setting her car down on the board and plucking out a pink figure for Rachel’s car as well.

“You wanna be a girl, right?” she asks.

Rachel nods and Marlow cuts herself off in the middle of a sentence, asking, “You can be a boy?!”

“You can be whatever you want to be,” Cosima says, apparently always ready with her agenda. Rachel mentally rolls her eyes. “If you want to take a wife, instead of a husband…”

Marlow’s eyes widen and Sahar giggles.

“Then I’d be a boy,” Marlow says, and Rachel tunes out as Cosima opens her mouth again.

The last thing she needs is to listen to these liberal politics while already decimating her beloved childhood game. If Cosima wants to turn the next generation of girls into a pack of lesbians, Rachel will not be a part of it.

She busies herself with organizing the cards in the box Sahar’s left a mess on the table beside her, sorting out insurance policies from money and lining everything up with the tidiest edges. If she focuses hard enough she can almost pretend she isn’t here in the mess hall with one of her least favorite counselors, stuck listening to her blather on about _identity_ and _love_ like it’s at all appropriate to be discussing over board games. (Board games that Rachel didn’t even really want to play, but is nonetheless upset that Cosima’s holding her co-players captive in a conversation.)

As she considers it she realizes _most_ counselors are her least favorite – and finding anyone not on that end of the scale is surprisingly difficult. Beth maybe. Certainly not Tony, as she saw him spit on the ground once.

It’s like high school all over again.

Only this time Rachel doesn’t even have any teachers to spend her lunches with, or the caretaker who always found her when he was doing his crossword.

She sticks the pink figure in the driver’s seat of her car and wishes they came in white, or black, or anything neutral and nondescript and didn’t make her feel like clawing her skin off every time she looked at it. _Pink_. Monopoly had it right with the top hat.

* * *

 

Had it not been raining Sarah would’ve been stuck with Paul and his lot for volleyball, so she’s _grudgingly_ grateful to have an entire ocean dropped down on the camp in bloody tidal waves.

It isn’t so much a storm without thunder and lightning but the wind is strong enough to constantly whip Sarah’s cheap dollar store poncho around her waist so basically everything but her shoulders is sopping wet and as she drags her group of whiners to the arts and crafts cabin after the shittiest drama session she decides she’d be better off with a garbage bag. At least it would more or less stay put.

A few of her girls are having the same problem, their parents having sent them with oversized raingear or (in Quinn’s case) some designer jacket that really does nothing to keep them dry. They stick to trees, mainly, where the downpour is less aggressive, Madeleine reminding them the whole time to get the heck out of there if they see lightning.

Honestly, Sarah wouldn’t mind losing a couple of her kids at this point. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to them bitch about being wet when Sarah’s not sure she’ll ever feel dry again.

They stumble into the arts and crafts cabin in a haze, shaking off the water and bumping into each other in the small space by the door like blood-drunk mosquitoes. There’s too much chatter for Sarah to really notice, at first, but as the movement at the front of the group stops she finally looks up and realizes they aren’t alone in here.

Rachel’s sitting at the back table with her lips pursed and her girls are all staring at Sarah with their paintbrushes dripping.

Of _course_ Rachel would have thought to book arts and crafts; the morning meeting was an absolute fog, but Sarah definitely remembers seeing Rachel in actual clothes and more alert than anyone should be that early in the day.

“I uh, didn’t realize,” Sarah says, acutely aware of the crinkling of her cheap poncho as it settles around her. “Thought maybe it’d be…”

As she speaks she realizes how dumb that was, not considering that _someone_ at least would have booked it off, if not Rachel. No way arts and crafts would be available when they actually might need to build an ark in the near future.

Rachel’s mouth is open slightly as if she’s waiting for Sarah to chastise herself, both amused and irritated at Sarah’s presence.

“I guess we’ll just…” Sarah looks at her girls and there’s a series of eye rolling and silent pleading as they start to button back up their jackets and she wonders if looking pathetic enough will invoke Rachel’s one tiny strand of human empathy.

The last thing she wants to do is drag her girls back to their cabin to sit on the floor and try to play some shitty game until dinner. They seem to be on the same page as her, grumbling and very slowly shuffling back out to the door, anger fully justified at Sarah’s lack of foresight. She’s considering maybe hiding out in the boathouse and trying to teach them knot tying or something when Rachel lets out a cross between a scoff and a sigh and finally speaks.

“You could…” Rachel gets out, looking like she hates herself for every letter that escapes her lips, “…stay. If you’d rather not head back into the rain.”

There are twenty girls watching the two of them like it’s some sign of the apocalypse and Sarah’s not so sure herself, but Rachel rolls her eyes and motions to the empty table and it’s apparently all Sarah’s kids need as they wiggle out of their raincoats and pile into seats like puppies until Sarah’s left standing by the door on her own.

“Uh, thanks,” she says, and then spends a good minute trying to untangle herself from the poncho before hanging it up on one of the open hooks.

Rachel watches her with disdain, a paintbrush in her hand, and Sarah realizes coming here means she’ll actually have to figure out some sort of art thing to do with her kids. (And _not_ a repeat of last year’s failed bird craft. She never wants to see another feather again.)

“So what are you guys doing?” she asks, moving into the room, close enough to Rachel’s lone table to clearly make the girl uncomfortable.

Rachel presses her lips together and pointedly glances down at the painting in front of her. “Watercolors,” she says. “I suppose, if you’d like, you could join us.”

“The watercolor paper’s in the paper cupboard,” Madeleine says helpfully, hopping up to go get it.

Sarah’s glad, because she knows where one one thing is in here and that’s the giant sink.

Madeleine recruits Sameera to help her get the paint and paintbrushes, the two of them setting up the table exactly as Rachel’s set up her own group. A paint set per two girls, everyone with a brush, four large containers of water to share. It’s better than Sarah could do and she thanks Madeleine as she makes her way around the table. 

“So what are we painting?” she asks.

Quinn makes a face like how the fuck should she know and Afsheen shrugs, swirling her crusty paintbrush around one of the recycled yogurt containers holding water as if she’d be content to do this all activity block even without paint.

Rachel’s girls have the beginnings of actual scenes on their paper, light colors dissolving into white, and Sarah wonders if Rachel gave some sort of lesson with this and when she turned into this weird, calm artist type. The last time they were here together Rachel kept grimacing at the paper mache like she’d rather eat dirt than be stuck watching it come to fruition.

“We’re painting things that make us happy,” one of Rachel’s girls says finally, her paper filled with something blue.

“Or a happy memory,” another one adds.

Rachel has a slight smile on her lips over in the corner and it doesn’t even disappear right away when Sarah glances over – like she might not actually mind Sarah seeing, for once, that she can feel anything other than contempt.

(Rachel’s painting too; Sarah’s not exactly surprised that she’d have something to paint but she still wonders what, the little she can see from here something soft and yellow and entirely abstract.)

“Do you wanna paint too, Sarah?” Raya asks, shifting in her chair a little like she’s making room.

The table’s not too crowded, and maybe if it was just her girls Sarah would join them, settling in to be a part of their conversations and happy to watch their paintings take form, but something has her hesitating and glancing back at where Rachel sits alone. Pity, she tells herself. But it isn’t.

“I think I’m gonna, uh,” she mumbles, grabbing a piece of thick paper and a paintbrush from where Madeleine put the extras, and then tries to casually drift over to Rachel’s scratched up table.

There’s an extra chair next to Rachel but she waits for Rachel to say something, to acknowledge that Sarah’s standing here hoping she’ll tell her it’s okay.

She doesn’t even _want_ to spend the next hour and a half with Rachel.

But she’s still hovering here, clutching her art supplies like a stupidly eager kid.

Rachel lifts her gaze slowly, taking in Sarah’s presence, the dampness of her clothes, her dripping hair. And then she sighs and nods and flinches as Sarah sits down, sending a light spray of water across Rachel’s side as her hair settles into place.

“I’ve never done watercolor before,” she admits, paintbrush clunky in her hand as she stares at Rachel’s paint set.

Her brother’s the one who’s into art, always bringing home top-graded projects from school and filling the fridge with something Mrs. S can be proud of. His Christmas and birthday gifts are always more art supplies, expensive sets and pens and things Sarah has no idea how to use, his future so clearly filled with promise. Sarah’s proud of him, of course. But she’s always wanted to be good at something too. Everything about art has always felt so foreign to her.

“You use the water to control the intensity of the color,” Rachel says after a pause, dipping her brush in the water and then swirling it on a dry square of blue. “See how it comes up thick? The more water you use, the lighter the color.”

She holds the brush up for Sarah to see, the tip a dark concentrated blue, and then swishes it away in the water.

“Start with the lighter colors,” she goes on, “and then build up from there. A light wash always makes a nice background. The details come in later, in a darker tone. There’s no erasing if you make a mistake.”

Sarah lets out a tiny, intimidated laugh. “Sounds complicated. Are you sure the kids can do it?”

“Most kids learn watercolor in primary school,” Rachel says with a lift of her shoulders.

 _You’re an idiot_ , Sarah hears.

She dips her brush in the water, careful not to get too close to Rachel. She’s realizing now how little space is between their chairs and how much she’s doomed herself to holding her breath until it’s time to clean up but Rachel seems unfazed and only watches her movements with little interest.

“What happy thing are you painting?” Sarah asks, just so Rachel will stop staring at her hand.

She drags her brush over the yellow paint without really thinking of copying Rachel’s paper but then realizes it might look that way and makes a deliberate squiggle on her own paper to try to show her it’s different.

Rachel frowns like Sarah’s asking how she feels about the death penalty (probably all for it, actually) and focuses hard on her painting with a tightened jaw.

Sarah can make out squares, some sort of wavy grid-like pattern, but apart from that it’s just yellows and what looks to be peach and it might as well be an inkblot for how much sense she can make of it.

“It’s-” Rachel stops and then swallows, and Sarah feels like telling her never mind, she doesn’t need to know, but then she’s speaking again and the words are gentle. “It’s the light in my childhood bedroom, when the sun hit the quilt my mother… It’s just one particular memory.”

It falls out soft and delicate like eggshells and Sarah wants to cradle it in her hands, knowing how careful people sometimes need to be about their childhood memories. _Thank-you_ , she wants to say, wants to ask what it means to her, but Rachel’s eyes are glassy in a way Sarah feels like she shouldn’t be seeing and she does her best to look away and focus on putting more paint on her paper.

“What are you painting?” Rachel asks after a long minute.

Sarah’s paper is full of yellow curls and springs and she wishes it were anywhere close to the real thing.

“My sister’s hair,” she admits, her lips pulling into a smile without her consent.

Rachel looks at the painting and then shifts her gaze to Sarah. “Wouldn’t it look like yours? If she’s your-”

She stops herself like she’s said too much and Sarah nearly laughs. She _knew_ Rachel was eavesdropping the other week when Naomi was basically interrogating her about her family life.

“Nah, she’s dyed it a lot, I guess,” Sarah says with a shrug. Rachel nods and still looks slightly stricken about her near-admission. “But it’s like if you tried to put sunshine into like, some physical form, all golden and bouncy and just… beautiful, you know? It’s beautiful.”

Rachel’s the last person she’d choose to share this with, insides knotting up at just the thought of Helena, and yet Rachel seems to actually get it; to get how much Sarah misses her and wants to know her. Her hand is on Sarah’s leg before Sarah even realizes she’s moving and the touch is warm, careful on Sarah’s goosebumped skin.

She wonders if Rachel can feel all the hairs she missed shaving or the way her blood rushes in the veins below or how she’s trembling, slightly, blaming it on thoughts of Helena, doing her best to keep her eyes straight ahead.

Looking at either Rachel or Rachel’s hand on her thigh would shift something inside her and she can’t handle the aftermath of that right now. Not when she’s been doing _so well_ at not thinking about last Thursday night and what those few words did to her.

Rachel takes her hand away a second later, going back to her painting like it was nothing at all.

Sarah tries to pretend her heart isn’t racing and that she can’t still feel the heat of Rachel’s touch like it singed into her skin, leaving behind a burn mark in the shape of her delicate fingers, something Sarah’s going to be stuck dreaming about amidst Rachel’s stupid voice reading that stupid book in the stupid dark.

There’s a shriek not long after and a panicked _um I accidentally knocked the water over_ from Rachel’s table and then Sarah’s alone, doing her best to focus on Helena’s hair blooming in front of her and not Rachel bent over trying to sop up the mess with paper towel. God, she’s _stronger_ than this. It’s like some terrible middle school… crush.

Realization hits her in the form of bile rising in her throat and she wonders if this is some sort of punishment for everything with Beth and Paul or just generally being a terrible person.

It’s exactly the kind of sick joke she’d expect from the universe.

(Cosima’s going to have a field day.)

Maybe she can convince someone to come out drinking in the rain tonight, so she can get pissed and pretend the thought never crossed her mind. Go back to seeing Rachel as her camp nemesis. Just _erase_ it, and move on, and spend the rest of her summer repenting like she’d intended to when she told Felix she’d be coming back.

(She should call him. Should she? Would he just laugh? Little bugger.)

“You all right?” Rachel asks, sliding back into the seat beside her.

Sarah forces her face into any other expression than shell-shocked and hopes it looks close to normal. “Fine,” she gets out. “Still sick maybe?”

Rachel scoots her chair over and rolls her eyes, saying, “oh for goodness sake, Sarah, you could let a person know when they’re in danger of catching your germs,” and Sarah plasters on an apologetic smile and tries to convince herself she’s not panicking.

Panicking would mean it’s really true, and that would mean… well, something apocalyptic.

Something that will require more alcohol than she thought to bring with her.

Delphine should know what to do. She’ll snag her at dinner and they’ll figure something out and until then Sarah will paint the hell out of this picture and pretend not a single thing has changed except for her understanding of watercolors.

* * *

 

 Delphine laughs.

It isn’t a cackle, but they’re standing by the trash cans and it feels that way as Sarah contemplates climbing in the nearest bin amongst all the half-eaten apples and soiled napkins.

“A crush,” Delphine repeats, barely regaining her composure. “Have you told Cosima yet?”

Cosima’s luckily preoccupied with a homesick camper, back at their table trying to get the kid to eat something in between sniffles, and Sarah blanches at the thought of having that conversation. _No, it isn’t bloody Paul. No don’t go putting the pieces together_.

“Barely told myself,” she mutters.

There was one brief moment of consideration as she made herself a new rain poncho out of a stolen garbage bag from arts and crafts, back in their cabin while Zohal showered and the rest of her girls put on warmer outfits for the evening activities. As soon as the sun started to go down it dropped a good five degrees, shorts no longer cutting it, and even Sarah dug out her sweatpants for dinner. They’d be great for Sloppy Joes if she felt like eating but this potential horror story has stolen her appetite. 

Delphine makes a face akin to _this is certainly a predicament_ and gently rubs Sarah’s arm, and Sarah had forgotten that Delphine was basically in this same awful place last year. Thought she was straight and everything.

(Does Sarah? She’s never exactly had time for labels, but in terms of things that never crossed her mind… well. Cosima certainly blindsided her a little.)

“Can I know who?” Delphine asks.

Sarah snorts and does her best not to glance back at her table. “Uh, no.”

“Can I at least guess?” She looks like she might have a pretty good idea, smile teasing like that.

“No!” Sarah retorts. “Are you bloody- Christ, if I wanted Cosima to know, I’d tell her myself.”

She pushes her hair back out of her face and chooses now to look over at her table, telling herself she’s just checking up on her girls. The fact that she notices Rachel actually braved the Sloppy Joes tonight is entirely coincidental. 

“Well,” Delphine says, eyebrows raised rather smugly, “I’m assuming we’ll see you at the boathouse tonight then? Perhaps with your own alcohol for once?”

Sarah has a brief vision of herself crying in Cosima’s lap after a mickey of vodka and wonders if it’s a good idea after all, to basically hand herself over like that, but the idea of staying in and listening to Rachel pace for the hundredth time seems so much worse. 

“Yeah, okay. But I’m not sharing,” she says with a cheeky smile.

Delphine feigns indignation. “Sarah Manning! After all we’ve done for you.”

She laughs a second later and then gives Sarah a quick apologetic look for the circumstances, heading back to her table after a squeeze to Sarah’s shoulder that makes it all feel like some sports-related pep talk. Keep your head in the game and all that. Sarah wonders if Delphine has ever truly experienced things going poorly for her or just operates on what she’s seen happen to others.

She rejoins her own table with the rubbish she’d meant to throw out still in her hand, dropping down too hard next to Daniela and regretting it.

“Quinn said I have love handles,” Daniela says immediately, turning so fast her ponytail whips Ava across the face.

Quinn starts to shrink in her seat across the table before Sarah can even properly glare at her.

“Are you _kidding_ me, Quinn,” Sarah grits out, and buries her face in her hands, releasing a croak of a groan.

“She does, she-” Quinn starts to argue, but Sarah makes a noise over her words and drowns out the rest of whatever she was going to say.

It’s probably the most childish way she’s dealt with this feud so far but it actually seems to work, shutting Quinn up for the next ten minutes, pacifying Daniela enough for there to be no rebuttal, and Sarah gets ten whole minutes of peace to pick at the salad Madeleine so lovingly hounded her into getting. _Eggs, Sarah. Don’t you think you can skip the protein. Oh my god bacon bits do not count!_

She is grateful, in the quiet moments when Madeleine doesn’t feel like a mini Mrs. S sent here to micromanage her every decision. And at least it cuts down on the homesickness. If she could find herself a mini Felix she’d be set. (Nah, Felix is definitely irreplaceable.)

“Are you going to do a skit with us tonight, Sarah?” Sophia asks from the other side of the table, and Sarah realizes she’d forgotten, again, that she was even there.

 _No, I’m going to drink_ , she feels like replying. But she pulls her face away from her palms and gives Sophia a decent response because she’s tired of feeling like such a shitty counselor. The little moments add up, she knows.

“If you guys decide to do one about Gremlins, count me in,” she says.

There’s a snicker from down the table and she hates that she knows it’s Rachel. Who else.

“I don’t know what that is,” Sophia says with a half pout, lips ringed with red sauce.

Quinn grins. “I do. My mom-”

“Needs to stop letting you watch inappropriate movies,” Sarah interrupts, smiling when Quinn’s eyes flash.

“It’s only ‘cause my dad doesn’t want me to,” she says with a shrug, going back to her mess of a meal like she’s all too aware of the games her parents are playing.

There’s a sinking feeling in Sarah’s stomach that she tries to smother with a large chunk of hard-boiled egg, doing her best not to think about what kind of home Quinn’s coming from. She’s had her own fair share of shitty situations, eight years of trying on different parental units before a good one stuck, and she knows what the bad ones can do to you. She wonders what kind of person Quinn would be if she’d had a chance to flourish.

“I watched The Shining with my grandpa,” Madeleine says, sensing the need for something to fill the hanging silence.

Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up. “You wa-”

“It’s about the only thing he remembers these days,” Madeleine hurries out, leaning across the table so she can see Sarah’s face to emphasize that she’s Fine. “He loves it. We do a lot of special things together after school, just me and him. He lives in our living room which I think is pretty funny.”

Sarah’s still trying to wrap her mind around a _child_ watching The Shining but it dawns on her that she really doesn’t know much about her kids’ home lives or what kind of events have shaped them. They could be facing some serious shit and unless they told her outright she’d just never know.

“My abuelito lives with us too,” Daniela tells Madeleine. “He mostly just makes me watch Wheel of Fortune for the lady that does the letters.”

The only reason anyone watches, Sarah thinks.

And then she wonders if that should’ve been some sort of clue, that this Rachel bullshit could’ve been a possibility, and forces down a forkful of lettuce with a furrowed brow.

She could ask Cosima, obviously, but at best that would get her a _fascinating_ lecture on sexuality and genetics and some vague future plans for a Pride event, at worst Cosima narrowing down the possibilities before shoving her in the lake in shock, neither one appealing enough for Sarah to abandon her dignity. (She’s been to the Pride Parade, anyway. Took Felix a few years back after his first crush and got herself an eyeful of boob. _Not_ kid appropriate.) (Felix loved it.)

Delphine is at least smart enough to figure it out on her own, crossing Paul off that list so quickly Sarah could see it in her eyes and then doing the mental math to get her there.

Sarah didn’t tell them about Paul until it chewed up her insides. (Not that they couldn’t have seen.)

She carried that shit around with her until the acidity of it forced her to spill, so determined to need no one that it nearly destroyed her. And even then she was reluctant to share.

The only reason she’d possibly have to tell Delphine about a crush is if it was some terrible, life-altering thing that needed exterminating as soon as possible and had anything at all to do with Delphine’s area of expertise. She basically told her so she _wouldn’t_ have to tell. If Delphine’s smart she won’t mention it at all tonight and just drink with Sarah until she can handle herself, coming back to some place she can make sense of.

At least she has her garbage bag to keep her dry when she stumbles back to the cabin.

To find no one on the porch.

Which is what she _wants_.

“I’m going to force feed you if I don’t see the rest of that gone in five minutes,” Madeleine threatens from down the table, and Sarah lets out a long breath.

Cramming in another piece of lettuce, she vows to bring enough vodka to cleanse her soul of these impurities.

Even if it is a Wednesday.

* * *

 

It’s chilly in the morning, everything damp, and Rachel lets Evie bring a blanket to breakfast half wishing she could bring one as well. Really about a third of the kids and counselors come in pyjamas anyway so it wouldn’t be out of place but she’s of the opinion that lingering in sleepwear only works to delay the day’s start and does no one any favors.

(She’s not surprised, then, to see Sarah in pyjama pants and a mangy leather jacket.)

The weather report, as read to them by the director at this morning’s staff meeting, said there wouldn’t be any more rain past six, but the camp’s still waterlogged and full of puddles and they are to take the report with a grain of salt.

“What he means is be prepared to get rained on the second you think it’s safe,” Tony had muttered to anyone sitting close to him, which was (unfortunately) Rachel, Mark, and Art, none of whom replied.

At the very least the trees are doing their best to rid their branches of lingering water and the overcast skies remain unpromising. Outerwear is a necessity.

Rachel pulled out the only sweatshirt she owns this morning, a gift from her father upon receiving her university acceptance letter, the school’s logo emblazoned across the front on an unfortunate navy. She’d be worried about Sarah recognizing the school and figuring out they’re in the same city if she wasn’t so sure that Cosima already told her and hadn’t picked up on the fact that Sarah is currently nursing a particularly bad hangover, hunched over the table like she’s accepted death. It feels like a gift from the universe.

She watches at first; Sarah’s kids seem to understand she’s not feeling well, hopefully all still too young to know why, but are nonetheless pestering her with questions as she grunts from where she’s hidden her face. One of them (Madeleine) is hounding her with a plate of scrambled eggs, oblivious to the lurching of her shoulders that is no doubt the suppression of a dry heave.

It’s at this that Rachel slides her way down the bench, not so much to save her but to tease her in a way that won’t end in vomit.

“Beautiful morning,” she says as she stops with an inch of space between them, greatly enjoying the groan she gets in return.

Sarah doesn’t lift her head off her arms and looks, from this angle, to be a puddle of dark, tangled hair spilling out across leather, but Rachel can _feel_ the rude look she’s giving her.

“What do you want, Rachel,” Sarah mutters.

One of her girls glances at Rachel like she has a death wish but Quinn and her current accomplice look on with glee, all too happy to witness the pestering of their counselor.

“I just thought I’d come to say good morning, since I didn’t get a chance to at the staff meeting,” she says, her voice sickly sweet. “Of course that’s because you weren’t _at_ the staff meeting this morning. Am I to assume you’ve gone and gotten yourself sick again, Sarah?”

Sarah’s head finally pops up and her cheek’s creased from the sleeve of the jacket, the redness emphasizing how pale and vaguely sweaty the rest of her is. Rachel pulls her lips into a smile.

“You know bloody well-” Sarah gets out before stopping herself, glancing over to the rest of her girls who try to busy themselves with their breakfast.

She resigns herself to narrowing her eyes in a look that might be threatening if she wasn’t this hungover and then glances down to where Rachel’s leg is nearly touching hers. It’s only at this that Rachel considers her decision to sit so close, clearly not needing to press up against the girl to get her point across. It’d be regretful if it didn’t seem to bother Sarah so much.

“Are you not eating today?” she asks, motioning to the empty table in front of Sarah. “You know breakfast’s the most important meal of the day.”

“ _Thank_ -you,” Madeleine says from the other side of Sarah. “I got her eggs but- You know, even if you’re sick, Sarah, you still need to eat. You’re supposed to be on our team for Capture The Flag today.”

“We have to beat my brother,” a girl says from the end of the table.

Sarah exhales very slowly and directs her grimace at Rachel, who can’t help the smirk that forms in response. “Don’t you have your own girls to bother?” Sarah asks.

“Actually they’re pretty self-sufficient this morning,” Rachel replies, lifting her shoulders.

Even Evie is a little less needy than usual, maybe due to the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Rachel won’t question it in case it reminds her she hasn’t stuck her hair in her mouth since yesterday.

Sarah finally takes in Rachel’s sweatshirt, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly before she seems to put two and two together. It wouldn’t be something that slipped Cosima’s mind, so Rachel surmises that the alcohol had just temporarily wiped it from Sarah’s memory. Too bad that couldn’t have worked for a week ago; maybe Rachel would be able to read her book without thinking of that soft look in Sarah’s eyes.

“If I ever find your house,” Sarah says, nodding at the sweatshirt, “I’m gonna egg it _so hard_. Hand to God.”

Rachel laughs and rises from the table, deciding she might want a second cup of coffee this morning after all. (Not at all noticing that Sarah has nothing.) “I’d love to see it. Maybe you’ll even get my father’s car.”

She leaves before she can catch Sarah’s expression, ignoring the slight twist of her heart as she walks over to the drinks and cereal station. It’s entirely related to teasing Sarah anyway; she’s simply enjoying seeking revenge for the loud stumbling on the other side of the wall that woke her last night, enforcing that these poor decisions have consequences. Surely she should have learned that as a child.

(A foster child, though. No parents to shape her, barreling through the world alone. What little Rachel knows about foster care comes from a brief panic succeeding her mother’s death that her father might follow suit in his loneliness and mostly stemmed from one too many books on orphans but she knows enough to know there’s a reason Sarah’s lacking such basic skills. There simply wasn’t anyone to teach her.)

She doesn’t make eye contact as she returns, wordlessly leaving a coffee in front of where Sarah’s propped herself up with her hand and then going back to her own half of the table.

“Hey, thanks,” Sarah calls down, but Rachel pretends not to have heard.

It’s pity. Of course it’s pity, but a tiny smile slips out anyway, betraying her face to anyone watching as she sips the coffee she got for herself and purposely doesn’t look over.

She spies Sarah with the coffee later, hiding her face behind sunglasses despite the overcast sky as their groups come together for soccer; Rachel heads straight to the damp bleachers and sits on a bin liner she snagged from the mess hall but Sarah valiantly attempts to stand on the sidelines, clutching her coffee with an iron grip as soccer balls run rampant in front of her, before clomping over to the bleachers with a hand covering her mouth.

Rachel’s three benches up and is somewhat surprised when Sarah plops down next to her, immediately groaning about the wetness of the wood and nearly spilling whatever’s left of her coffee.

“Could’ve bloody warned me,” she mutters, cheeks pale where the sunglasses don’t cover.

Rachel raises an eyebrow. “It’s been raining. I didn’t think it was necessary to make the connection for you, Sarah.”

She’s wearing dark jeans anyway so it won’t be an issue when she gets up, mud already spotting the legs. At least there’s one other person at this camp who doesn’t own rain boots; Rachel was starting to think she’d missed some glaring memo. Maybe it’s a city thing.

She very nearly asks Sarah where Cosima’s from before realizing she doesn’t care outside of a sick desire to hear it’s the countryside, easily seeing her on a farm with hemp-obsessed parents. Of course everything’s about to change as they all go off for university anyway – maybe Rachel will get lucky and Sarah will head to some crappy college outside of the city, clearly not possessing the grades to get into any of the good ones. It’d be nice to know she was returning to the city alone. 

“Have any plans for once the summer’s over?” she asks lightly, telling herself she’s just making conversation.

Sarah’s sitting there all hunched over like that creature from Lord of The Rings, grimacing each time the wind picks up, her hair seemingly one giant knot from under her hood. She tenses as Rachel talks and barely even turns to reply.

“Uh, just school and my shitty job,” she says, sinking slightly lower across her knees.

That could be _anywhere_.

“Oh, which school are you going to?” Rachel asks. She sounds pleasant to her own ears and the voice is almost foreign.

Sarah exhales and sits up, finally turning to face Rachel. “Look, this isn’t something I wanted spread around, but I’m repeating grade twelve. Didn’t exactly have enough credits to graduate.”

“Truancy?” Rachel guesses with a raised eyebrow, but regrets it as Sarah’s face clouds over.

“Kinda hard to want to go to class when you don’t get half of it,” she mutters, hardening with each word as if expecting Rachel to throw them all back in her face.

Which is exactly what Rachel _would_ do, if it were anyone else, or even any other day, seeing how much it clearly bothers Sarah to be in this position. But… it clearly bothers Sarah, and Rachel doesn’t know why that’s spurred an ache in her chest or a desire to smooth it over like she’s suddenly someone who cares about the feelings of others.

She has her hand on Sarah’s knee before she knows what she’s doing, the second time in two days. Even through the denim she can feel the heat of Sarah’s body and tries to will away the flush that comes to her cheeks.

“That’s entirely understandable,” she says, eyes fixed straight ahead on the expanse of grey sky.

“I wanna do better, this time,” Sarah admits, her voice soft, and Rachel doesn’t know what to do with that but let it fill the air between them.

They both seem to be staring at the same vacant spot of sky, taking notice as a seagull comes through and in a great gust of wind somersaults through the air, body twisting and tumbling as it tries to regain its balance.

“Do you think it knows how to panic?” Rachel asks as it finally rights itself.

Beside her Sarah’s gaze drops to her lap. “No doubt in my mind.”

Rachel pulls her hand away slowly but lets it fall between them on the bench, ignoring the dampness of the wood and the chill of the wind across her knuckles. _It’s supposed to be summer_ , she wants to joke, but Sarah’s still staring at her knee, eyes vacant, and Rachel realizes this is more than the bird.

Sarah’s presence beside her suddenly feels like a fault line at the start of an earthquake.

Rachel grips the bench, trying not to fall in.

“It’s gotta say something about the coffee when it isn’t any worse stone cold,” Sarah says with a forced lightness, bringing the coffee to her lips.

Rachel had definitely noticed that as well; it makes her miss her father’s French press, which is about the only part of her father she truly misses. That and the small café near her school, which she’ll likely never visit again as she certainly won’t have a reason to be in the area.

“You know the camp website promised great food,” Rachel replies, schooling her features into something serious. Sarah still catches the smirk.

“They write that shite themselves,” Sarah laughs. “I swear, half the reviews are just the director trying out whatever new slang he learned the summer before.”

Rachel can’t stop the grin that slips out. “Well I was certain this camp definitely wasn’t _groovy_.”

She laughs at the sound of Sarah’s laughter, the two of them giggling as the wind runs through them and turns it into shivers. Rachel’s chest is filled with an airiness after the laughter dies down and they’re left smiling at each other, Sarah pushing her sunglasses up over her hood so her full face is visible, the silence taking a moment to settle.

When it does Rachel’s confronted with the sheer oddity of this situation – of sitting here with _Sarah_ , and actually enjoying herself, and momentarily forgetting that she hasn’t yet made a single friend. Maybe this is what it’s like to let people in.

She glances down at where Sarah’s hand has dropped down beside hers.

Sarah seems about to say something when a cheer erupts from the soccer field and Rachel realizes the practice has evolved into a game, one of the teams apparently scoring the first goal and running around like a pack of wolves in celebration. Their pinnies are tight over their jackets and sweatshirts; colors muted in the dismal weather. Even the blue seems closer to grey.

“Whose team was that?” Sarah asks. Her sunglasses drop forward as her head moves and she scowls and removes them to properly slide them on again.

Rachel squints at the field. “Yellow, I’m assuming. They’ve mixed up the girls but yellow seems to be celebrating.”

It’s Sahar’s team, and Rachel’s somewhat proud. Even with the slipperiness of the field they managed to score a goal. It doesn’t hurt that Sierra and Clementine are on the opposite team.

“You know, I have a girl named after a fruit,” Rachel tells Sarah after a pause, the two of them trying to pay more attention to the game below.

Sarah chuckles. “Clementine? I saw her around last year, but didn’t really get to know her. Is she that bad?”

Rachel considers the question before realizing she hasn’t exactly looked much further than the name. “Most likely,” she says. “I just think it’s ridiculous – why would you saddle a child with that? Will anyone take them seriously?”

“Doctor Clementine will see you now,” Sarah says in a low voice, imitating whatever hellish receptionist she’s apparently seen.

“Exactly,” Rachel says with a nod.

Sarah shakes her head, a smile still on her lips. “I don’t know, is it better or worse than Bandit? Because there’s definitely a Bandit in the eight year-old boys.”

“Oh no,” Rachel says gravely, “that’s definitely worse. Poor child.”

“It’s the hipsters,” Sarah says, and they both chuckle again.

There’s a commotion on the field just as Rachel notices a fine mist coming down with the next gust of wind and Sarah zips up her leather jacket, glaring at the sky.

“Guess we’re all stuck inside, then,” she says, gruffly heaving herself off the bench.

Rachel tries not to stare as she downs the last dregs of her coffee, revealing the pale column of her throat as her head tilts back before being swallowed up once again by a curtain of dark hair.

Of course she’s upset about having to head indoors, and not at all about leaving the bleachers. She’s stuck with Paul for arts and crafts next and that will seem twice as long knowing he’s likely to join them for whatever inside activity they’ll be forced into for the afternoon. Freeze dance in the rec hall will be _tedious_. She can’t even imagine playing Twister with his brood.

“You coming?” Sarah asks, suddenly on the field, staring up at Rachel through the small opening of her hood.

Rachel grudgingly pulls up her own hood as well and prays she doesn’t look half as ridiculous. No use ruining her hair in the light coating of rain.

“Where are we going?” she asks as she climbs down the bleachers.

Sarah shrugs, motioning towards the specialist who’s herding the kids to one large group at the end of the field. “Shelter? Maybe the covered picnic tables by the sports shed. If he thinks we’re gonna take over for the last half hour he’s got another thing coming.”

Rachel trails behind her as Sarah stomps through the grass, her hiking boots picking up mud with great velocity. She’s not exactly sure who’s responsible for entertaining the kids in the event of being rained out but doesn’t doubt that there will be hell to pay if this freckle-faced youngster tries to pin it on Sarah – anger may be numbing her hangover for now, but as soon as she comes to a stop the pain will return.

At least, for once, Rachel’s on her good side.

And as she steps through the mud she wonders how exactly that happened without her noticing.

* * *

 

The camp gets divided between the rec hall, the mess hall, and the arts and crafts cabin in the afternoon, drizzle turning into another downpour and camp director scrambling at lunchtime to find some place for everyone to be.

It’s supposedly arbitrary but is no doubt some form of karmic retribution as Rachel finds herself stuck with Sarah, Delphine, Cosima, and Art for another miserable afternoon of board games, and Alison managed to secure the arts and crafts cabin for her, Beth, and Mark with the seven year-old boys. Still, better than the chaos of the rest of the boys descending on the rec hall in what Paul laid out as “Hunger Games, but dodgeball.” Rachel’s unsure if the mirrors will survive.

“You know that’s gonna end in a phone call home,” Sarah had muttered to Cosima as they all huddled around the upper staff table at lunchtime for a sham of a meeting.

It’ll be a miracle if it ends without a broken bone, but Rachel was more focused on the way Alison clutched Beth’s arm, as if she was afraid to let go lest she disappear in a cloud of smoke. She’s fairly certain their arts and crafts will be more Alison doing everything in her power to keep Beth in her sight. She almost feels sorry for Mark, stuck trying to run a craft between them.

The mess hall dissolves into another kind of chaos with fifty kids and one metal cabinet of games, kids spreading out in groups across the tables to try and at least find some space for themselves.

Rachel finds herself stuck at a table with the rest of the counselors minus Art, who actually seems content to sit on the floor with his six year-olds and try to guide them through a game of Cranium, the rule sheet never leaving his sight. Delphine on the other hand gave her girls a giant floor puzzle and left them to their own devices, confident the older kids would keep an eye out. Rachel’s almost disappointed that they do.

If she was smart she would have followed one of her girls and joined whatever terrible game they’ve set up – even Twister, which looks to be mostly Sarah’s girls with a couple younger ones. Anything other than quietly sit three feet from Sarah as she tries to pretend she’s not listening to their conversation.

They’re going on about something from Cosima’s personal life that they all seem familiar with, and it’s so much the lunch tables that Rachel avoided in high school she wants to roll her eyes.

 _Scott_ keeps coming up. An old flame or a cousin or _something_ , and some photo of his cat that Cosima will “totally show” Sarah after dinner. Rachel’s so bored she gets up and finds herself one of the sad remaining puzzles, some artsy oil painting in nearly a thousand pieces, and brings it back to the table in a huff.

(Of course she doesn’t _have_ to sit here, but she sat down first and she refuses to let them bully her out of her preferred place. The other tables are all littered with kids and she’d rather not accidentally step into a conversation if she can help it.)

“You actually gonna do that?” Sarah’s asking, three pairs of eyes suddenly on Rachel, although Sarah’s still behind those sunglasses.

She focuses on sitting up straight and not the burning of her cheeks. “Well there isn’t much else to do,” she says curtly.

If they weren’t aware of the giant gap of space between where they’ve gathered and where Rachel sits they are now, all staring down the table with amusement and what looks to be sympathy. Rachel wants to hurl the box at each of their faces. (She _hates_ it, how different Sarah is around them; how she loosens up and grows two feet taller and could scale a building. It isn’t Sarah. It’s some act she puts on that Rachel wants to yank from her lips.)

“You could sit and chat with us,” Delphine offers, but it sounds like drinking bleach.

At the polite shake of Rachel’s head she seems content to drop it, Cosima on the same page, but Sarah frowns and scoots down the bench with a look to her friends. Rachel can only blame it on the lingering hangover.

“Well then we’ll do the puzzle together, yeah? Can’t say I’ve come at one of these in a long time,” Sarah says with a grin.

Delphine glances at Cosima and then the two of them are moving down the bench as well, filling the space across from Sarah and Rachel with smiles too bright for their faces. It’s somehow worse than the previous sympathy.

“That’s because you have like, zero spatial reasoning skills,” Cosima says as she grabs for the cover of the box.

Rachel’s about to tell them she has a very specific strategy when Sarah makes a face at Cosima and dumps the pieces all over the table in front of them, a mountain of bumpy edges revealing their imageless cardboard backs. It’s the kind of chaos she’d expect from a child – but then again, Sarah doesn’t seem to be far off.

“Nine hundred bloody pieces?” Sarah questions, turning the cover in Cosima’s hands. “Think this can actually be done in two hours?”

“It could have if you didn’t begin with such chaos,” Rachel mutters, grimacing at the pile, and Delphine laughs.

“I agree,” she says. “Start flipping them over so we can see all the pieces.”

“That’ll take _ages_ ,” Sarah gripes.

Rachel has a handful flipped over in front of her already and tells her, “You’re more than welcome to watch if you feel you can’t handle it.”

“Perhaps you’d like to join Cranium?” Delphine suggests.

She’s the last person Rachel would expect to share a smile with but finds herself doing just that, secretly taken aback by the glow it brings to her cheeks. So Sarah surrounds herself with attractive people. Interesting.

Sarah shuts up for a minute, exaggerating a pout as she turns the pieces over, but then mutters, “I don’t know why we couldn’t just play Pictionary.”

Cosima snorts. “Because you can’t draw for shit.”

“I have a Scrabble game going with Sarah on Facebook,” Delphine tells Rachel, continuing to flip the pieces, “and I don’t think she’s scored higher than fourteen points on a single word the entire game. Getting her to take her turn is like pulling teeth.”

Rachel does her best to turn her smile into something with malice but it still hangs too sweet.

“I’m impressed she knows how to play at all,” she says, and pretends she doesn’t see the sheepish smile Sarah tries to bite down on.

“Hey, give me a pack of cards and I’ll wipe the table with the lot of you,” Sarah says, pointing at them with a puzzle piece before realizing she has its match in front of her and gleefully presses it into place.

Cosima tugs it over and adds another two pieces. “Just not Go Fish,” she says.

Sarah rolls her eyes and echoes the statement in a desolate tone.

It’s a _child’s_ game, Rachel feels like saying, but maybe that’s the point; all things simple seem to evade Sarah, as if perhaps she assumes they’re out of her skill set and fails before she even sets out to try. It’s a shame they didn’t go to the same high school – maybe Rachel could have been her tutor and pulled her through her worst subjects, allowing her to graduate with her friends.

(She still could, she very briefly considers. They are unfortunately in the same city: she could easily carve time out of her day to help her in likely English, maths, science, and even art. But that would require spending time together and Rachel doesn’t even want to remember they breathe the same polluted air.)

The four of them settle into some sort of strategy in the following silence, pushing the connected pieces to the center so everyone can have a look and hopefully add on, still picking from the pile Sarah created.

About a half hour in Sarah remembers the drinks cart exists for any of the upper staff who drop by and makes them all coffee, breaking into the kitchen to snag cream. She even brings a cup to Art, letting him know he’s welcome to join the puzzle, but he takes one look at their table and swears he’s happy playing his modified game of Cranium. He still has eight of the ten kids sticking with it, so maybe it’s actually working.

Rachel isn’t entirely surprised to find out Cosima takes her coffee black with sugar, or that Delphine takes both sugar and cream. She is, however, a little stunned that Sarah knows how she takes her coffee without asking, despite figuring out Sarah’s coffee preference six days ago.

There are some things that are easily picked up on when sharing a table for every meal.

“I’m just grateful we’re not stuck with Alison,” Cosima says a few sips in, the start of an actual picture forming on the table in front of them.

Sarah snorts and finally braves removing her sunglasses, sliding them on top of her head. “Can you imagine trying to do a puzzle with her? She’d slap our hands off. Eugh, and if _Beth-_ ”

She freezes and Cosima and Delphine exchange a look as if this is some sort of admission of her guilt or wrongdoing. Rachel gets the feeling that the Paul incident doesn’t come up too frequently in conversation. Which is understandable, everyone having their own alliances, but Sarah stares at the table in alarm as if she’s admitted to a murder and it seems a little much. Even for the circumstances.

“Beth finally introduced herself to me,” Rachel says, reluctantly stealing the focus. “At the dance session yesterday. Neither of us cared to participate – we just sat on the bench the whole time. I’m sure the specialist was thrilled.”

Sarah looks at her with a momentary flash of gratitude. “Hell, I took a nap when my girls were dancing. Hip-hop is surprisingly soothing.”

“That’s because your girls are self-sufficient,” Delphine says and Rachel remembers that she has the youngest of the camp.

It must be a summer of frustration trying to lead the six year-olds through any kind of activity, even if the group of kids switches out every two weeks. She can’t imagine  _choosing_ to work with that age group knowing they’d need constant hands-on guidance – it’s been hard enough handling the ten year-olds and at the very least they can all tie their shoes.

She brings her Styrofoam cup to her lips with a glance to Sarah and freezes slightly as she finds herself being watched as well, Sarah only looking away as Delphine says something about a section of the puzzle. 

 _I’m sorry about Beth_ , she wants to say.

But that isn’t it at all, and she finds herself frowning at the space between them on the table as she filters through her sentiments.

It isn’t even sorry – she wants to tell her it’s unfortunate, that everyone keeps pinning Beth on her like a scarlet letter, her very own rock to roll up and down the mountain. That Beth isn’t her fault or even something that comes from what Paul did to her. _Sometimes people just disappear, Sarah_.

(Her mother-)

She swallows too quickly and has to accept the burn of the liquid all the way down.

“You okay?” Sarah murmurs as Rachel fights back a cough.

Cosima’s saying something to Delphine, the two of them momentarily unaware, and Rachel just nods to get this over with quickly. A few more swallows and she can barely feel the singe of tender skin.

Maybe what she wanted to say wasn’t about Beth at all.

Maybe it was the soccer field, and sitting next to her on the bleachers, and how Rachel never thought she’d feel so light. _Maybe I want to say thank-you_. Or it _is_ sorry. She pictures the bird, tumbling through the air as if it’d never right itself again.

And looks down at her hands, where she’s pieced together a face with a hole where the smile should be. Gaping.

Wanting.

 _Maybe I wanted to say Thursday night_.

Seven days and she can’t find the words.

What was it that her father underlined, copied out in the margins? _I realize then-_

Sarah pushes out a smile, gestures with her own coffee. “Happens to the best of us.”

Rachel blinks and sees her as she did a week ago, looking down on her from the top step as she glows in what little light the stars upturned. The softness of her mouth, relenting, for a moment, to no longer holding something bitter in its center. How carefully she let herself listen.

_I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know._

“Of course,” Rachel says. She locates the mouth.

It fits, roughly, in the hole where it belongs. The girl doesn’t smile.

* * *

 

They do hot chocolate and ghost stories that night before karaoke to make up for no campfire, and Sarah finally finds herself alone with Cosima as the kids dissolve into groups for performances or cluster around Alison where she’s roped Beth into bracelet-making.

She knew it was coming; she knew Cosima would find out through osmosis or some crap and come coax it out of her like a poison, so she isn’t surprised as Cosima corners her at one of the back tables where she’s tying knots in embroidery thread. (She’d sent Sameera to go get it for her, which is probably the lowest part of this. She just couldn’t bring herself to face Beth or her guard dog.)

Cosima takes the wobbly chair that Sarah had been avoiding, rocking it purposely from leg to leg, fixing Sarah with one of those stupidly pleasant smiles of hers as if this might break her before she even has to talk.

She snaps out a _what_ so maybe it works.

“How long?” Cosima asks, and Sarah tugs another crude knot into the thread.

“How long what?”

Between Mrs. S and Felix at home she’s sure she could play this game all night, if she wasn’t acutely aware of Beth’s presence across the room behind another one of the folding tables, sitting there expressionless as she wraps a strand of red thread around her fingers. Sarah keeps waiting for Alison to look over and take notice but Alison’s too busy chatting, always too busy chatting, eyes wild and delirious after years of this, putting everything she has into what Sarah knows without hearing is the world’s most boring story.

“Delphine says you have a _crush_ ,” Cosima says, whispering the last word.

Sarah finally tears her eyes away from Beth and takes in Cosima’s appearance in front of her, the usual Sarah-directed weariness cast aside for something encouraging for once.

Maybe just one time in her life Sarah could learn to not be such a burden to the people around her.

“I have a problem,” Sarah says, undoing the knot she just tied to make it tighter. “A small problem. And you’re not allowed to guess.”

Cosima lifts her hands, palms upturned. “Hey, she wouldn’t tell me anyway. Said if you wanted me to know you’d tell me yourself. I’m a little hurt, Sarah. When have I ever not kept a secret?”

“It’s not that,” Sarah says.

In all honesty the only person she’d want to keep it a secret from is herself, and as that’s clearly not an option she’d rather just keep it as much a mystery as possible. The moment Cosima learns who it’ll rise up like the dark in a nightmare and swallow Sarah whole and she can’t readjust to something like that when she’s barely crawled back from last summer.

Cosima frowns and Sarah pretends not to notice the split second of hurt that comes with it. “Well is there any part of it you want to talk about?” she says in a small voice.

Yes, Sarah most likely should have gone to Cosima first. And a night of drinking where Delphine and Sarah kept it from her while Sarah pushed the world away with anything she could swallow only acted as a great deal of salt in the wound, even ignoring Cosima holding back her hair as she vomited over the side of the rowboat. (God, did she miss Krystal last night.)

“Not yet,” Sarah says, unable to look Cosima in the eye. “Just… give me a little time to figure it out.”

“Okay,” Cosima says, and it isn’t as exasperated as Sarah expects; she’d forgotten how patient Cosima and Delphine were about the whole Paul thing last summer. Letting Sarah take her time even after the whole camp knew.

She can _not_ let this turn into Paul again.

(It isn’t even… ugh. It isn’t even close. Somehow that feels worse.)

“I take it you’re not coming out tonight then,” Cosima says as she shifts her chair to the other creaky leg.

Sarah grimaces. “Uh, yeah, no, probably not for a while. Why do we need to drink every night anyway? Bit excessive, don’t you think?”

“ _Most_ people limit themselves to like, one or two drinks,” Cosima says, her lips curled up in a smirk. “Or they surprisingly just come to hang out. Something you clearly know nothing about.”

“Hey, Krystal and I are a rare breed,” Sarah defends.

She drops the knotted-up thread on the table in front of her, fingers sore from the constant tugging and coercing. Cosima looks at the thread and then up at her in disbelief.

“Yeah, you wish you were anything like her,” she says, and turns in her seat as a song finally starts playing on the machine.

Sarah recognizes it as one of this year’s pop songs, something she hasn’t been able to escape from every radio station and car ride with Felix and that grates at her in the worst way. Of course it’s a few of Rachel’s girls, Clementine and two others, dance moves taken right from the music video.

If her hangover hadn’t finally given up just before dinner Sarah would be making a beeline for the door to sit outside in the rain until karaoke ends.

Unfortunately her non-hungover self is slightly more polite and is saving the storm-out for a situation that actually deserves it, which she has a sneaking suspicion will be sooner than expected. Between Paul and Alison it’s basically an inevitability.

“They’re not that bad,” Cosima says, motioning towards the girls on stage.

Girl named after a fruit might actually have a marketable skill, Sarah thinks, and catches herself starting to look around for Rachel before realizing not every thought needs to be shared. Especially when that was such a fleeting, one-time thing. (She’s still having trouble believing it actually happened, she actually made Rachel _laugh_ , like it’s something her conscious could possibly come up with on its own.)

Sarah picks up the knotted thread again and wishes Sameera had grabbed her a second color, so tired of staring at grey. Maybe she could even figure out how to make a bracelet.

“Karaoke is my least favorite night,” she tells Cosima, leaning over the table so she doesn’t have to say it too loudly. “Even worse than skits.”

She knows she’s in the minority, almost everyone preferring karaoke to skits and even karaoke to movie night when it’s a terrible movie. But Sarah truly can’t stand hearing kids breathe their way through songs she either hates or might have actually enjoyed at some point. Knowing she still has at least six more karaoke nights before the summer ends sits heavy in her chest.

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re sober,” Cosima says with a wave, eyes still fixed on the girls performing like it’s actually something worth watching. “Give you a couple drinks and Alanis Morissette and we’d have to drag you off the stage.” 

Sarah’s about to protest when she realizes it’s an unfortunately likely scenario and just grits her teeth.

The trip to Montreal they’ve sort of half planned to legally drink could very much take them to a karaoke bar – especially if Cosima mentions this to Delphine. It’d be just like them to plan that type of public embarrassment.

“She’s actually not too evil,” Cosima says a second later, and Sarah quirks an eyebrow before following Cosima’s line of sight to where Rachel sits with a few of her girls.

She’s smiling for once, this soft, half smile that seems to be directed at one of the girls on stage, and even though Sarah definitely wouldn’t peg her as someone who enjoys physical contact she doesn’t seem to mind the way the girl next to her is draped across her lap and playing with her fingers. She looks _warm_. Sarah presses a hand into her stomach to smother the fluttery feeling. 

“Yeah, she’s-” Sarah says, realizing Cosima’s looking at her for a response. “Surprised me.”

Cosima’s hand comes up in an odd little twist, punctuating her shrug. “Too bad, we could’ve used a camp villain. Although I guess we do still have Alison.”

“We still have _Rudy_ ,” Sarah says, as if it’s possible to forget last year’s end of the summer prank, and Cosima laughs and nods as Sarah finds herself looking over to where Alison sits with Beth. 

She’s not terrible, but she does come off as someone to avoid when all she ever does is snap at people. Sarah wonders if she knows that basically everyone here hates her – everyone but Beth, but that could just be some lingering loyalty from having gone to school together and Alison being the one to drag her to camp in the first place. God, Alison must have been even worse as a camper. Sarah can’t even imagine.

(Did Beth laugh back then? Was she a normal, happy kid? She had to have been, but Sarah still pictures her young and sullen and so much the opposite of her best friend.)

(Paul told her once that Beth had a wicked sense of humor. It must be awful to mostly exist in past tense.)

“You’re a little quiet tonight,” Cosima says, looking at her with concern. “Is that the crush, or…”

There’s a glance to where Paul sits with Tony and Rudy, the three of them cheering on the group of boys on stage. Cosima looks back to her like she might confess some big new fuckup or another layer of last year she’s casually been holding onto until now – and yeah, there definitely are a couple more layers to it, but as if Sarah would even admit them to herself. She’s the master of stuffing things away.

“Mostly just thinking about the state of my liver after last night,” she says wryly, and laughs when Cosima does.

“Yeah, that path’s not gonna get you to thirty.” Her smile slips to something a little more solicitous. “But seriously, you can always tell me if something’s bothering you. You know that, right?”

Her hand moves across the table and Sarah brushes her knuckles across it, saying, “Yeah, ‘course. You’re like my best friend.”

As she says it she realizes it’s scarily true; apart from Felix, she wouldn’t exactly use those words for anyone back home. The girls she hung around in her current high school aren’t bad, but she’s also not too upset over watching them graduate without her. And her crowd from the school before that didn’t even seem to realize she was gone. Who knew it would take a shitty summer job to get her someone who cared.

Cosima laces their fingers together, a soft smile on her lips. “Mine too, Sarah. I’m really glad you came back. Between you and Delphine everything I have is at this camp.”

A weird nostalgia hits Sarah in a sudden wave, as if they don’t have six more weeks together before she has to deal with another year of bad Skype connections and dumb group texts. She finds her throat aching like she might actually _cry_ and sees Cosima apparently feeling the same, biting her cheek, and has to laugh at how ridiculous they’re being.

“God, Cos, you’d think it’s the last week already,” she mutters, forcing a grin.

Cosima lets out a wet laugh. “It’s the rain. Obviously.”

Sarah nods but then, “Is your period due? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’ve only got like, a couple days to mine. And we definitely synched up last year…”

“Excuse me, girls can totally be emotional outside of menstruation,” Cosima says with a stern look. “But yeah, I think I’m due next week. Downside to working with a bunch of ladies.”

One of them, Sarah nearly corrects, but then it might not be such a bad thing to be around so many wildly different types of girls. It’s about the only place she feels she doesn’t have to make excuses for her kind of gritty femininity; she can’t say high school ever gave her that.

“By the way,” Cosima says, releasing Sarah’s hand, “I’m totally coming to Canada for Christmas break. And if you didn’t live in the _bottom of your province_ -”

Sarah rolls her eyes with an affectionate smile. “Yeah, yeah, you could bus up in a couple hours. Sorry I don’t want to live under eight feet of snow.”

“Sorry you don’t want to save me like eight hundred dollars,” Cosima teases, and Sarah’s shoulders rise.

“Whatever,” she says. “You staying with Delphine or me?”

What she’s really asking is if she’ll have to budget for a train ticket to Quebec on top of gifts, but Cosima seems to get it anyway.

“You, of course,” she says, tapping Sarah’s arm. “Delphine’s parents already offered to pay for train fare. Hope Mrs. S doesn’t mind hosting two more for the holidays. But Delphine _can_ cook, so…”

Sarah had better hold on to that conversation for before they get report cards. But then again she might be pleased to see Sarah hanging out with people who aren’t likely to take her shoplifting or get high in the school parking lot, so maybe she’ll be a bit kinder to the idea than Sarah’s picturing. She’ll still probably have to give up her bed and sleep on the floor.

“It’ll just be nice to have more than three people for Christmas dinner,” she says, returning Cosima’s smile.

Felix is gonna love her – Sarah couldn’t have picked a better friend to bring home to him. And she’s sure S will come around with someone to help her in the kitchen, especially someone as gracious and polite as Delphine. Maybe Sarah will even drag them out tobogganing one night at Riverdale Park. It’s weird to be thinking about snow two weeks into July, but she can’t say she isn’t excited by the idea.

“Your girls are up,” Cosima says, alerting Sarah to four of her kids – Raya, Daniela, Zohal, and Afsheen – taking the stage with big grins.

The intro notes to yet another song Sarah would pay to not have to hear come tinkling through the speakers and Sarah sinks back into her seat, giving in to having to look like she’s a supportive counselor. If everyone else can do it (and with Frozen, with the younger kids) then Sarah can manage as well.

She’s sure, after all, that she’ll miss this when the summer’s over.

She’ll miss a lot of things.

* * *

 

The end of the rain brings with it an unsettling silence, and in the dark of her room Sarah listens to the sleep-sweet breathing of her girls in their bunks and wishes it didn’t hurt.

Part of her – the lonely part – thinks of Helena. It creeps up, the way it always does, and then she’s biting her cheek against the pillow because in some other world she’d know the sound of her sister breathing by heart and maybe even mirror it in the other bed and the gaping wound of her childhood grows several inches wider, throbbing underneath her skin.

She slips out with the cigarettes in an effort to numb the thought and tries not to make anything of it. It isn’t an addiction, but she always returns with some soft form of resolution after and it feels nice to try on a different kind of self-destruction. To let her lungs take the brunt of it for once instead of just offering up her body. That therapist S sent her to for awhile would be proud.

It’s late enough that everyone out drinking tonight will be back in their beds, and while she’s a little bummed to have missed the fire they built after the rain stopped it’s also a relief to not have had to talk to anyone. She can’t say she would have made great company. And with last night ending in vomit, even a whiff of alcohol tonight likely would have led to a repeat performance.

It’s also late enough for the bugs to be out on a mission; she wishes she’d thought to put on bug spray as she swats a mosquito off her thigh. At least she packed AfterBite this year. Last summer she came home with welts.

The moon hangs heavy tonight, a buttery glow through the remaining clouds, and after all these overcast skies it’s a welcome sight through the trees. Sarah pauses on the path just to look up – to take in its fullness, the light it pushes through the branches. She and Felix used to sneak out to the backyard to look at the night sky when they were younger and she thinks of him, the way he always seemed so sure someone was looking back.

 _We just can’t be the only ones out here, Sarah. We’re not special. There’s no way it works like that_.

He’s always found comfort in the arbitrary nature of the world – the opposite of Sarah, who needed to believe so badly in a reason for everything that she’d make them up for herself. Lessons we need to learn, she’d tell him. Things the universe is trying to teach us. He’d thrown it back in her face when Vic- when Vic happened, no doubt just needing someplace to put his anger, but she only threw it back at him harder. _You think I didn’t need to learn my place?_

She’s been a terrible sister. She trips over a tree root and stops to chide herself, for being so clumsy with her feet and with what she keeps tossing at a _child_. Her baby brother.

Maybe if she’d grown up with someone her own age-

She forces the thought away as she tugs a cigarette from the package, jamming it between her lips and lighting it with an unsteady hand. She hates Rachel’s tiny lighter more than anything – the nondescript white thing that had been crammed in the emptier half of the pack, leaving a mark on her thumb every time she uses it.

(She’s sure she tossed a lighter in her bag when she was packing. She uses Rachel’s every time anyhow.)

It’s comforting to leave a trail of smoke behind her, lingering in the damp, mulch-thick air as she trudges through the trees. It’s a different brand than Vic’s, a cleaner scent, and she likes the idea of reclaiming the act of smoking from memories of him; maybe next time she walks through someone’s cloud of smoke downtown she’ll be brought back to the forest instead of his tobacco-stained apartment and his hand around her throat.

The beachy part of the lake breaks through the trees up ahead, sand smothering pine needles and leading out to a glittering stretch of dark water. She’ll never get over the way it clears her lungs just coming close to it, the air so pure and clean in a way she’s come to dream about when back in the city, yearning for a breath so sharp it cuts.

It’s less chilly tonight but she still shivers as she moves through the sand. The lake holds onto the cold, she’s found, spitting it back when the air starts to forget it.

She’s so focused on the lake, the gleam of moon on water, that she almost doesn’t notice a pale form drifting outwards from the shallows. It’s Beth, she realizes. Wading out towards the middle.

She’s let her hair down – all Sarah can think is that it’s beautiful, in the moonlight – and then there’s a bloom of red around her and Sarah thinks of watercolors before Beth’s arms near the surface, the source of the bleeding, and she realizes Beth is crying.

The cigarette hits the sand without a sound.

Sarah barely manages to get her jacket off before she’s hurling herself through the water, the shock of the cold numbing her into a single-minded determination, and as her arms catch Beth’s frigid body it’s like falling through a shattered mirror.

“Just stay with me,” she wills, pressing her face into Beth’s wet hair to steady her grip.

Beth comes without resistance for the most part, allowing herself to be dragged out of the water. Sarah thinks it’s a good sign until she notices how much blood is really coming out and Beth collapses half on top of her in the sand, limp and quiet, her lips a sickening blue.

“Beth,” she says hoarsely, trying to pull her into an upright position, “please, just stay with me, please…”

There are gashes on both her wrists, blood staining the sand around them and Sarah’s bare legs. All she can think is she has to slow it down, she has to keep her conscious long enough to get her somewhere with a phone, and _why_ did she leave her cell phone back on her bed.

Beth slips further against her body and Sarah lets go for a second to tear off a strip of her t-shirt, grateful for once for all the holes in her ratty wardrobe as it rips without much of a fight. She tears the strip in two and catches Beth again to wrap the cotton around her wrists, pressing down where she can feel open skin. Her health teacher’s gruff voice rings in her ears – _elevate! Above the heart_ – and as she situates her body to try and get Beth to a standing position she does her best to hold her arms up without losing her grip.

Everything’s so slippery – she has to tell herself it’s lake water to not think about how her fingers are slick with blood.

The nearest cabin is the sixes, just down the path from the boathouse, and as Sarah struggles to keep Beth from collapsing back down in the sand she convinces herself it will be fine once she gets there; Delphine will call an ambulance and Beth will stay awake and everyone will live.

“We’re gonna get you to the hospital,” Sarah tells Beth, skin of her exposed stomach chafing against Beth’s wet clothes. “But you’ve gotta stay awake for me, okay love? You’ve gotta stay awake.”

Beth seems to be somewhat aware, eyes shut but clinging to Sarah in a way that makes her throat ache as she half drags and half carries her down the path. It takes a good ten minutes – Sarah stops twice to adjust her grip, Beth slipping down in waves of consciousness – but Sarah manages to get them to the back of the cabin, throwing the full weight of her shoulder into Delphine’s bedroom window until she sees the ghostly panic of her face through the screen.

It’s a full minute before Delphine comes around the side of the cabin, a hulking First-Aid kit in her grip.

She’s on the phone already, giving the camp’s address, and as Sarah slumps against the cabin wall Delphine says, “a counselor- my friend tried to kill herself, I believe. Her wrists.”

“She’s barely conscious,” Sarah says, voice gravelly. Delphine repeats it into the phone.

Beth makes a soft noise as Sarah carefully lowers them both to the ground, using her body to keep Beth from lying down as she seems to be trying to do. Her muscles ache from trying to hold up Beth’s arms and the cotton’s soaked through, but Delphine hangs up a second later and whips open the First-Aid kit as she dials a second number.

“I’m just looking for the gauze,” she says, rifling through, phone tucked against her shoulder. She pulls it out just as whoever it is answers and immediately sets about wrapping Beth’s wrists over the shirt strips.

 _There’s been an accident_ , she says into the phone. _We’re outside of bunk six-A. She cut her wrists._

An accident, Sarah thinks, holding Beth’s arms up so Delphine can wrap them, cheek pressed hard against Beth’s as if by sheer force of will she can keep her awake. There’s no bloody universe in which this would be an accident. She can feel Beth breathing against her, shallow. This was desperation. This was… they should’ve seen it coming.

“The director’s on his way,” Delphine says, taking Beth’s wrists from Sarah to apply pressure herself. Sarah wonders if she saw her hold weakening or just needed to do this herself. “Ambulance will be here in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. The director will drive her out to the gates to make it quicker.”

“Okay,” Sarah says, unable to take her eyes off Beth’s arms in front of her. She’s hugging Beth around her middle now, every muscle in her upper body screaming for a rest but somehow unable to relax.  

“Sarah,” Delphine says, “she’ll be okay. You saved her life.”

Sarah nods numbly and wishes she could hear sirens in the distance. Anything to tell her that might be true.

* * *

 

Rachel finds herself being nudged awake by hands larger and more polished than any of her campers, and it takes a second to blink back the sleep before she realizes she’s looking up at Delphine in a blood-stained shirt.

“What _happened_ ,” she gasps out, lurching upwards so fast her vision blots for a moment.

“There was an accident,” Delphine says, and glances down at her shirt like this is the first time she’s seen it. “Beth’s on her way to the hospital, Sarah found her, saved her life, but… I don’t believe she should be alone right now. And she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

 _Sarah found her_.

Rachel tastes the words like iron on her tongue; she’s standing before she can think about it, cramming her bare feet into her tennis shoes. She knows without asking the rest of it. She hears _Beth_ and she knows.

Blood, she thinks. Beth wouldn’t think to bring pills to camp. She wouldn’t know to keep things neat. Or maybe she’d crave a visible end.

“Where is she?” she asks, instinctively grabbing the jacket from its hook, not even knowing if it’s cold outside. It was raining earlier, wasn’t it? She feels dazed and can’t remember.

Delphine glances back out the doorway, as if checking to make sure the kids are sleeping. “She said she needed a cigarette. I hadn’t known she smokes, but- Ah, she said she left them at the lake, with her stuff, where…”

“Where she found Beth,” Rachel continues.

She moves around Delphine and out through the cabin, stopping on the porch at the sight of Delphine behind her in full moonlight. Her tank top will never wash clean. Her arms are stained, but she seems to have scrubbed her hands enough for only small dark crescents to remain under her nails. As if sensing Rachel’s gaze Delphine crosses her arms over her midsection.

“I’m just worried about her,” Delphine says when Rachel starts moving again, helplessness tangy in her voice.

Rachel leaves her still standing there, arms crossed in the light of the moon, unable to look back as she barrels through the forest. Delphine didn’t come to her for comfort; she tells herself this as she heads for the lake, not wanting to think of the clean skin of her hands or the shirt that will never un-know this night.

It _is_ cold, or at the very least she shivers in her jacket, wishing for that terrible sweatshirt, hating the sound of her shoes against the pressed earth.

Sarah found her.

Of course she did, because Sarah goes out at night and Sarah doesn’t know how to attract anything but tragedy.

Rachel picks up her pace and tries not to think about an ambulance coming and going while she was asleep. About Sarah finding Beth while Rachel dreamt about _birds_ , of all things, and cage doors that wouldn’t stay shut and winged creatures that still didn’t leave.

She scuffs her shoe hard against a stone as she stops suddenly, seeing Sarah’s curled up form through the trees about twenty feet from the lake. Had there been even a couple more clouds Rachel would have missed her. Had she kept her eyes on the water she wouldn’t have spotted her at all.

Sarah has her knees pulled up on a large rock, facing out into the darkness as smoke curls around her, and doesn’t seem to hear Rachel until she’s clearing her throat. Even then, she turns as if Rachel isn’t fully there at all – just an apparition in the shadows, hovering there with a hand outstretched until finally lowering herself onto the rock beside her.

“Delphine sent me,” she says.

Sarah’s hair is damp, curled in tangles down her back.

Rachel pretends she can’t see the bloodstains. She takes the cigarette from between Sarah’s fingers and pretends they aren’t a coppery-red.

There’s a beat where Sarah seems to be processing that she isn’t holding the cigarette anymore and she stares at Rachel with round, shadowy eyes and then her face collapses into tears and she’s pressed against Rachel before Rachel can think to react. She numbly puts an arm around Sarah’s back, flinching at the dampness of her torn shirt before pulling her a little closer.

It’s like comforting a child, she tells herself. She doesn’t have to think about why. She just has to make it safe.

There was a paramedic, when her mother-

There was a woman with dark skin who picked her up while they loaded the ambulance. Rachel had been too big, far too heavy at nine to be in someone’s arms. She didn’t want to be put down.

Sarah doesn’t want to be put down. Rachel pulls her fingers through Sarah’s wet hair, tugging gently at the knots, wary of the cigarette in her other hand burning its way down to the filter. It feels like a grenade the way she holds it out from the both of them. She’d throw it if she wasn’t sure it would take them with it.

 _You’ve been so brave_ , she wants to tell Sarah. The words Rachel once had murmured to her in a sea of flashing lights.

Sarah shakes against her; she rakes her fingers down Sarah’s back, gentle, tucking her chin into Sarah’s lake-scented hair. She has to concentrate to name Sarah’s tiny, jumpy breaths as crying but she can feel the wetness against her collarbone.

Finally, after what seems like both ages and merely seconds, Sarah pulls away and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. It leaves a smudge of what Rachel tries to think of as dirt in its wake.

“I really didn’t think it was that bad,” Sarah says, voice raspy.

Rachel has to fight to dissolve the sudden lump in her throat.

 _What happened_ , she wants to ask. She knows. She doesn’t want to know at all.

“We should go back to bed,” she says.

Sarah’s eyes are glassy as she meets Rachel’s gaze. “I can’t, there’s no way- I can’t go to sleep tonight.”

She sounds panicked at the thought and Rachel remembers the night she spent in the waiting room, her father pacing a tight path around the coffee table for hours before just disappearing down a hall. Someone had brought Rachel a pillow and a scratchy blanket but she left them on the seat beside her and read every single magazine instead.

“Okay,” she says, and realizes her hand is still on the small of Sarah’s back and drops it to the rock. “Well then I’ll stay up with you.”

“You don’t-” Sarah starts but then stops herself, shifting her hand slightly so it touches Rachel’s leg, somehow just as cold as the rock beneath them. “Okay. But we have some stops to make first.”

Rachel’s eyebrows raise.

“Alison,” Sarah clarifies.

Of course, Rachel thinks. If anyone deserves to know, it’s her. She’s almost mad she didn’t think of it first when she should be the levelheaded one in this situation but Sarah has a sudden fierce determination in her eyes as she rises that makes Rachel glad she didn’t.

It’s difficult to follow behind her, trying to match her steps to Sarah’s wide, careless stride. She leaves the burnt-out cigarette in the ground by the rock as a sort of marker for them having been there, hoping that’s all that stays and that no blood transferred to the rock’s rough surface, but the smell of the smoke clings to her fingers and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to associate it with anything other than Sarah.

She reaches the cabin about half a minute after Sarah, but somehow Alison is stepping onto the porch just as Rachel climbs the steps and it feels so much like an intrusion she has to hold onto the hem of her jacket.

“What happened?” Alison asks, fingers on her cheek as she takes in Sarah’s torn, bloodstained t-shirt.

Sarah looks down at herself and then back at Alison and freezes with her mouth slightly open.

Rachel takes a step forward.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” she says, putting on a warmth she’s never heard in her own voice before, “but Beth’s at the hospital. She… attempted suicide. Sarah was the one who-”

“No,” Alison interrupts, hand creeping up her cheek, turning so she’s facing neither of them. “No, she can’t have. Beth wouldn’t- She’s smarter than that.”

“Alison,” Sarah says as she puts a cautious hand on her arm.

Alison whips around with a speed that’s somewhat terrifying and Rachel steps back instinctively, wanting to tug Sarah with her but just watching as Alison looks her up and down and seems to fully take in the blood on her clothes and bare legs.

“Paul,” she mutters so quietly it’s almost inaudible.

“What’d he do?” Sarah demands.

There’s a fire in her eyes that has Rachel touching her forearm. “Sarah…”

“He talked to her tonight,” Alison says, a slight shrillness to her voice as if she can’t quite believe it. “Alone, he said he had to talk to her alone… I should have stayed with her.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Sarah grits out.

A look passes between her and Alison as if something might be said about Sarah’s tryst last summer but nothing comes of it, Alison instead nodding and then thanking them for letting her know. She tells them she has to get some sleep before the flag raising, disappearing back into her cabin before Rachel can think to say anything empty and placating as one is supposed to do in this situation, and then suddenly Sarah’s tearing off the porch for the trees and Rachel doesn’t know what to do but chase after her. 

Sarah, it turns out, can _run_.

Rachel, as she already knew, cannot.

By the time she catches up her ankles are bleeding where plants and twigs snatched at them and Sarah has Paul pinned to a tree in his boxers.

“ _Sarah_ ,” she chastises, trying to catch her breath, glaring when Sarah finally turns around and loosens her arm across Paul’s chest.

“Five minutes,” Sarah says. Her eyes flash and Rachel understands the importance. “Just give me five minutes.”

Rachel replies in a curt nod, backing up just enough to not be held accountable should anything happen and also wanting to be close enough to the cabin to hear if anyone wakes up. The last thing they need, on top of everything tonight, is for a child to bear witness. She tells herself she’s listening for sounds of wakefulness and not at all paying attention to Sarah whisper-shouting at Paul as if ignoring _all your bloody fault_ and _Beth could die, you fucking arsehole, do you care about anyone_ makes her any less complicit in this.

She steps in as Sarah seems about ready to truly claw his eyes out and gently pries her off of him, holding her by the shoulders as she continues to lunge at him as he brushes bits of bark from his skin.

“This isn’t something we need spread around,” she says low at Sarah’s ear, easing her clutch as she feels Sarah’s muscles begin to relax. “The last thing Beth needs is to be camp gossip. And the last thing _you_ need is to get sent home for a physical assault.”

Sarah nods, turning into her with the unguardedness of a child. She smells coppery and of sweat and Rachel wishes it churned her stomach, anything to tell herself she’s holding Sarah Manning and it doesn’t feel right.

“Go back to bed, Paul, and don’t say a word,” Rachel says over Sarah’s shoulder.

He hasn’t spoken at all since Rachel’s been here and she realizes this _is_ his girlfriend, hopefully surviving in some hospital bed, and they should probably be showing him the same compassion they gave Alison. But then he glances at Sarah with such care and Rachel’s stomach muscles tense, remembering again what he did and why Sarah stiffens at the look.

She releases Sarah knowing full well what she’s aiming to do. Paul takes the punch like he knows he deserves it, and Rachel takes Sarah back to their cabin to get cleaned up.

* * *

 

Rachel was aware, of course, that Sarah’s cabin is a mirror image of hers, but until she’s actually standing in it, rifling through Sarah’s suitcase while the shower runs, it doesn’t fully occur to her how strange that is. She’d reached for the doorknob on the wrong side, for example. And Sarah cries in the washroom on the opposite wall.

After Sarah dresses in the clothes Rachel pulled out, sweatpants and a Ramones t-shirt that surprisingly isn’t full of holes, they slink back out to the porch to sit on the wide steps.

Sarah clearing her throat is the first time either of them have made a noise since returning to the cabin – maybe they were both hyper-concerned with waking any of the children, tiptoeing through their sleeping bunks, or maybe Sarah’s choking on the same awful panic that has Rachel wishing for an oxygen mask before making the hospital connection and wanting to torch her thoughts.

“How long until we can get rid of this night,” Sarah asks, voice soft and rough at the same time.

Rachel hesitates on the words before checking her watch.

“It’s almost three,” she says.

Maybe they’ll go to the flag raising today.

Sarah shifts her face like something inside her caught on a loose gear. But she accepts the answer, staring hard out at the wet grass, the picnic tables where it seems they once sat as different people. Rachel wants to tell her it’s possible to come through this unchanged but can’t even put the words together for herself.

 _My mother-_ she goes to say.

Her mother was- she should say her mother was beautiful. (But Sarah’s beautiful.) She should tell Sarah her mother knew everything there was to know in the world, was smarter than her father, could recite entire books word for word – but then her mother didn’t know how to climb out of her sadness. Or how to say goodbye. (Sarah looks at her and she swears she sees her mother’s hazy eyes.)

 _Have you ever lost anyone_ , she wants to ask, but she knows the answer.

Orphan. A story that begins with loss.

She doesn’t know how long they sit there before Sarah presses into her, hair wet and curling from the shower but a different kind of cold from before. Rachel glances down at her bare arms; wonders if she should offer her jacket. If Sarah would even accept.

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” Sarah whispers.

Rachel’s eyes sting. “I’m sorry, Sarah. It… It doesn’t work like that.”

No, it plays on a loop inside the mind: a personal picture show with the images all stretched out, warped for an even sicklier effect. Each facet of the moment blown up to the extreme and rolled over on the tongue so many times it should be worn smooth – but the sides are still jagged, sour where they cut the skin.

 _I was nine_ , she tries to say. _I found her in the bathtub. No water._

She stiffens as Sarah’s hand takes hers but finds herself easing into it, immediately trying to commit to memory the heat of her soft skin and the length of her fingers and the way they both fit.

_She’d swallowed all the pills that were supposed to make her better._

Sarah’s thumb strokes a gentle path down the curve of Rachel’s knuckle.

“You’re going to get through this,” Rachel promises, voice catching.

“Rachel,” Sarah says; breathes. “There was so much blood. I didn’t- Shouldn’t we have known? Been able to stop it?”

Rachel thinks of the book sitting inside on her bedside table, passages underlined in her father’s dark pencil. How her mother had taken one look at it and tossed it on the floor. He knew; he knew; he knew – and he gave it to Rachel instead, no explanation, because he knew there’d be an aftermath.

“If someone wants to escape, they will do anything in their power to make it happen. No matter how hard you try,” she says with her eyes fixed on the shadowy figure of a bent tree.

Sarah exhales beside her, warm against her neck.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have punched Paul,” she mutters.

Rachel’s lips pull into the slightest smile. “No, that was definitely deserved. If not for this then for- for a lot of things.”

It’s not quite a laugh – it’s wet and it breaks and sounds like the echo of the tiniest sob – but it still directs a small amount of warmth back to Rachel’s chest as she hears it.

Sarah glances at Rachel’s watch but frowns at where it sits in shadow. Rachel angles it into the moonlight, saying, “Half past three.”

She wonders if this night will drag on forever.

She wonders how it will feel when Sarah lets go of her hand.

“Are you really gonna stay up all night?” Sarah asks, voice a fraction of what it normally is. “It’s Friday today, I know you have canoeing in the…”

Rachel moves her thumb in their shared grasp so it runs along the apex of Sarah’s wrist.

“Until the bugle,” Rachel says. “And, obviously, after as well.”

“Okay,” Sarah says.

 Rachel tries not to lose her breath; to hold onto something solid. She doesn’t know how to circle back from this. _I’ve grown up and around the loss of her_ , she wants to say, but she can’t equate Beth with loss – not yet, not when there’s still a possibility this won’t be what takes her.

A tremble runs through Sarah’s body and she tucks herself closer to Rachel, as if by giving Rachel the worst of it she can somehow make it through this night. Give, Rachel thinks. I’ll take. I can take. She could spend the next three hours folding each shiver into her bones to keep them someplace steady if it would give them the outcome they want to hear. 

She thinks, abstractedly, of Camus. _There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart_.

She hopes.

For once, she hopes.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Rachel deal (and don't deal) with the aftermath of Beth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this chapter sits at around 28,700 words, all of which took way too long to come together.  
> just a heads up, there's some vomiting in here as well as (obvious) references to a suicide attempt. and it veers into slightly nsfw near the end. thanks for sticking with it (:

 

* * *

 

Sarah notices the bruising of her knuckles as the sky finally begins to lighten, echoing the muted bluish-purple swell of her skin. It tightens in her chest for a moment – she thinks, at first, it’s some part of Beth she forgot to wash off, before realizing there’s a dull ache that accompanies it and she presses her fist into the wood of the porch to heighten the sensation.

Outside of nausea and a chill that won’t leave her alone this is the first thing she’s felt in hours.

(Outside of the heat of Rachel still sitting firm beside her.)

“I should have thought to ice that,” Rachel says when the movement of Sarah’s hand catches her eye. It breaks the long-growing silence and her voice is hoarse.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Sarah says, stretching her fingers out over her thigh.

It doesn’t, really. If she doesn’t look at it she can’t feel a thing.

Rachel tuts softly and shifts her grasp in Sarah’s other hand, their palms now a fraction closer than the past half hour. Sarah’s been keeping time by these tiny movements, telling herself it’s easier than trying to read Rachel’s watch, mostly just not wanting Rachel to realize what a terrible mistake she’s made in spending the night on the splintery steps. Each shift Sarah expects her to let go. If anything, her grip’s tightened.

 _The sun’s coming up_ , Sarah wants to say, swallowing and taking in the way the bruise-colored sky coats the tops of the trees and smudges the shadows into something a little more bearable.

The bugle will sound soon; cracking open the morning, hurtling them into the aftermath.

(Mostly, Rachel will let go of her hand.)

Rachel says it for her, a murmur. Their hands bump against Sarah’s thigh as if punctuating the sentence.

It won’t be long before they’ll be forced to move through this as if nothing happened – she can’t imagine smiling or fielding any of Quinn’s comments but she also can’t imagine having to tell them, that someone they know was sad enough to try and-

She looks down at her knuckles to make sure it still isn’t Beth’s blood.

She’s not even sure how she’ll tell Felix.

S would know. She’ll call and ask for her first, and S will have some quip about her being in trouble already but…

She suddenly wonders what Beth’s parents were doing when they got the call; if they were sleeping, if it woke them and if they could feel, just by the sound, what awaited them upon answering, in sad middle-aged pyjamas as they fumbled for the phone. She realizes she knows nothing about Beth’s parents. They’re divorced, maybe. So one would find out a sick five minutes before the other and still not be able to do anything.

She hopes they care; she hopes they drive all night with tears in their eyes.

Rachel shifts next to her and it’s only been ten minutes but the sky is a completely different shade, a scorching pink veining out across orange. Sarah thinks vaguely of the sailor’s warning and curls her fingers back up into a fist.

“Eight minutes,” Rachel says softly, “to the first bugle.”

Later Sarah will think of the way Rachel’s grip tightens just enough to mean something here, equating her fingers to claws when the daylight burns, but for now she turns just enough to see a sliver of Rachel’s jaw and her pale lips and has to swallow her guilt for wanting this night to exist as anything else.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to…” she starts to say, hesitating as Rachel’s spine straightens.

“There’s no other option,” Rachel says. Her words are hard in a way that Sarah decides to see as strength. “You have children to care for. Let that be your only thought.”

Sarah internalizes it and tries to pin it in place inside her, needing it to act as a lantern to follow through the haze of this day. She has children to care for. She has people who need her to be exactly who she was yesterday and the day before that, and she’s biting hard on it as the bugle bleats out across the camp and as she and Rachel finally break apart to wake their girls, hands cold, keeping it at the front of her mind through showers and clothes and dragging them all to the flag raising because she doesn’t know what else to do.

She and Rachel stand near each other with their groups and pretend they don’t see Alison across the horseshoe, laser cut smile as she sings with Beth’s sleep-filled girls and her own. _This is undignified_ , Rachel whispers to Sarah in the middle of a terrible song, and they both have to fight to keep it about singing at the crack of dawn, neither wanting to comment about the way Alison’s white teeth could tear through her face any second now.

If Beth’s kids weren’t without their counselor it really could be any other day at camp the way everyone’s carrying on. Sarah wonders what they’ve been told, about being left in the middle of the night; if they were told anything at all or if Alison just showed up and told them to be ready for the flag raising in however many minutes.

Sarah braided Afsheen’s hair in front of the sink this morning and there had been a moment where Afsheen stared at her through the mirror for longer than comfortable, as if she could see, from the way Sarah pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth, that something happened overnight. Just a moment. Sarah curved her bruised hand away from the mirror and Afsheen went back to brushing her teeth and it was over, but Sarah’s still wondering if she knows. If they all know and they’re all too scared to ask about it.

On the walk to breakfast she pictures them all awake in their bunks last night as she and Rachel sat out on the porch, listening in a stricken silence. Did she say anything that would have told them? Did Rachel? She can’t remember.

She can’t even remember coming back to the cabin, but she knows it happened and she knows she showered because there’s a smudge of red on her shampoo bottle still sitting pretty in her caddy. That’s what the night feels like: a smudge of red. A smudge of red between the trees and the loss of feeling in her fingers.

She’s sitting next to Rachel again in the mess hall at the empty middle part of their table, a cup of tea somehow in front of her, pancakes on her plate that she doesn’t remember taking. A glance at Madeleine doesn’t tell her anything about them.

Rachel’s drinking black coffee and staring at Sarah’s bruised knuckles like they’re some indication of the day to come, and then Paul walks by their table with a marred cheekbone and Rachel stiffens as Sarah inhales. He doesn’t look at either of them. It’s almost as if nothing happened and Sarah wonders if this is how he’s going to survive the day.

(She wants to talk to him. She wants him to acknowledge it. She wants-)

Her hand curls around the cup of tea and it feels too much like home, entirely its purpose, but heavy in her stomach in a way she’d kill to smother. 

(She wants someone to say Beth’s name.)

“He should have put ice on that,” Rachel says, mostly to herself.

He’s at his table, sitting with Tony, joking about whatever, the bruise almost a shadow in the strange fluorescence.

Sarah scrapes her nail down a groove in the table. Rachel watches and swallows.

 _Punching him didn’t change-_ Sarah starts to imagine saying to Rachel, but then Raya scoots her way down the bench and has something to say about Quinn and Sarah’s actually glad to have this to deal with today. She has children to care for. She has people who need her. It’s a mantra now, swimming in her cup of tea with each cold sip.

There’s no space to think of anything else.

 

* * *

 

 

Tennis offers Sarah a chance to slip away to phone home with its proximity to the squat administrative building, but she finds herself hesitating as she watches her girls practice their swing.

What would she even say? Nothing that wouldn’t have Mrs. S up here in two and a half hours, harping on about trauma as she drags Sarah’s entire troubling childhood behind her. Sarah would be home and back in counseling before she could think to say goodbye. Even if S somehow decided to let Sarah work through this on her own she’s still not sure if she’s allowed to mention it at all – especially after threatening Paul within an inch of his life.

She’s been telling herself she just has to get through today, but now that she’s alone, Rachel and her kids in canoes somewhere up the lake, it’s hitting her that there’s going to be an After.

After Beth.

After Beth lives, she tries to tell herself, but even then it isn’t something that will just disappear; Beth will come back or she won’t but everyone will find themselves different on the other side of it.

Sarah reaches for a handful of grass to tear out of the ground but only finds herself holding gravel. She wonders if she’ll be pouring Beth out of her shoes like sand when she gets home; if she’ll find strands of Beth caught in the teeth of her combs. She thinks of Felix sitting on her bed with the God’s Eye and pictures telling him how she can still feel the slick weight of Beth’s body in her arms every time she flexes. She wonders if it will be like this the rest of her life. She drops the gravel.

Quinn comes stomping over a second later, hair a cloud of its own, and drops to the ground beside Sarah likes she’s trying to take the world down with her. There’s a bench, Sarah wants to say, but then Quinn might ask why Sarah’s sitting in the dirt instead, and she doesn’t have an answer that would make it sound understandable without giving everything else away.

“What’d you do,” she settles on asking.

Quinn has the kind of scowl that only ever exists to replace guilt. “Kept smacking butts with my racket,” she mutters. “Not my fault they’re all so big.”

Sarah probably would have seen that if she’d managed to take anything in, but all she seems to have gathered from the past ten minutes of staring at the tennis court is that one of the fuzzy yellow balls has been slowly doing its best to escape into the grass. She makes a face that might be somewhere close to disappointment. Quinn sighs.

“Don’t you ever get tired of this?” Sarah asks, turning in time to catch a whisper of something across Quinn’s face.

Quinn shrugs where Sarah expects a snarky reply and it only adds to the sickening eeriness of the day.

There was a workshop they did, during orientation week, on how to be a positive role model, and Sarah considers that this would be a good scenario to use those empty tools. _What are your goals for the future_ , she’s supposed to ask. _How can I help you realize your potential._

She’d fully believed this shite last year, taking notes and memorizing wording, as if the perfect set of questions could save a kid from themselves. She really did want it to work – she wanted so badly for there to be a formula to turn into the kind of person she needed when she was a kid. _Take an interest_ , the director had instructed, laser pointer trained on the slideshow’s grinning clipart. No one mentioned kids could see right through you.

“You look weird today,” Quinn says, turning so Sarah gets the full force of her frown.

“I’m wearing mascara,” Sarah replies tonelessly. She’d put it on so she wouldn’t cry, but she’s not even sure she could now. Everything feels… compressed.

Quinn leans back to take it all in. “What, you trying to look pretty?”

Sarah makes a weird noise in her throat as she scrambles to find a kid-appropriate response but then Quinn jams her hands under her legs, adding, “My mom doesn’t let me wear makeup. She says it makes me look cheap.”

 _I’m gonna punch your mom in the face someday_ , Sarah wants to say.

“I don’t think anyone should be policing girls’ appearances,” she says instead, pushing her palm into the gravel.

Quinn jiggles her leg, frown slightly pensive. There’s a second where Sarah thinks she might actually say something decent, for once, but then she’s staring at Sarah’s knuckles and asks, “What happened to your hand?”

The kids might actually put it together, Sarah realizes, between her hand and Paul’s face. And if any of them connect it to Beth’s sudden absence…

She doubts they’d see anything more than some love triangle bullshit and sort of preemptively hates that anyone could think Beth would leave over _that_ , but then obviously it’s better than the alternative. She’d rather they call her a home-wrecker and think Beth weak than have to realize the extent of Beth’s sadness.

“I uh, nearly fell in the shower,” she tells Quinn, doing her best to look sheepish. “Punched the wall trying to stay standing.”

“You’re an idiot,” Quinn informs her, but she’s smiling a little, a shine to her eyes.

Sarah wants to tell her she’ll never need makeup to be beautiful. She wants to tell her to harness her fire, that she could do anything, that the world won’t know what hit it, but she knows Quinn would shut her out so quickly for any of it. Just stay happy, Sarah tries to will her. Stay angry. Whatever keeps you from getting sad.

She tries not to react at all when Quinn’s fingers ghost over her bruised knuckles.

For a moment she sees Quinn as an adult, reaching down to tend to a scraped knee with the forced blank face of someone trying not to let on to how bad it is.

“Idiot,” Quinn reiterates.

It’s gentle like the fingers she pulls away, curling them tight against her thigh. Sarah pretends she doesn’t notice so Quinn doesn’t have to change her soft expression.

 

* * *

 

 

Apparently it _is_ possible for thirty kids to comfortably fit into the arts and crafts cabin, despite Sarah’s preliminary assumption that there wouldn’t be enough chairs let alone elbow room.

Sarah comes late, by Alison’s definition, so it’s her girls that get split between the two tables, filling in the spaces between Alison’s poised eight year-olds and the nines that still all look sleep-deprived and a little lost. She wonders as they settle if the kids reflect their counselors. Then looks to Quinn and hopes to god they don’t.

(The girl Beth was comforting at the lake a few days ago is in long sleeves again, ready to cry in a way Alison seems to be overlooking. Sarah thinks of Beth’s arms before she can steady herself against a filing cabinet. She’s _nine_ , there’s no way, but she looks so sad, and…)

“I hope you weren’t expecting paper mache today,” Alison says, suddenly appearing next to Sarah. “With thirty kids that’s just unreasonable.”

Sarah wasn’t expecting _anything_ today, except maybe for Alison to show some microscopic sign of having experienced last night, and since that’s clearly not happening Sarah wouldn’t even be surprised if the earth opened up and swallowed the camp whole. Her eyes are only open right now because of a lingering shock; this is not a day for expectations.

“Are you just running two groups now?” Sarah asks kind of numbly.

Alison is two steps too close to be comfortable but also seems a hundred miles away with whatever planning’s happening in her mind right now and Sarah can’t even find it in her to shift herself out of this corner. Who would have thought the easiest conversation she’d have with Alison this summer would be after… this.

Alison pulls her fingers down the length of her ponytail, eyes on the kids as the art specialist sets up today’s project.

“Apparently. There’ll be someone coming soon to take over for however long-” There’s a heavy pause and then she plasters on a smile and says, “It’s all being sorted out.”

Sarah presses her teeth into her top lip and tries to find anything to say that will fit into the strange neutral veil Alison’s cast over the whole thing.

“So we’re weaving, huh?” she says, finally taking in the tables.

Alison’s smile settles into some level of comfort in talking crafts as she corrects, “Basket-making. Emily mentioned we had all this raffia left over from a donation so it seemed like the obvious choice.”

Sarah looks at the crinkly, papery ribbon-like stuff piled up in front of the girls and gives a slow nod. She has no idea how they’ll make any of this into a decipherable form, but okay. As long as they’re focused on something. It beats watching them smear paste all over their skin.

Alison heads over to help the art specialist and Sarah decides she might as well take a seat at the table Rachel always claims, obviously not going to be of any assistance with this one. At the very least she can deepen some of the graffiti with a thumbtack someone carelessly left on the tabletop, maybe even fixing up the curse word that’s been mostly scratched out. This place could use some humor. She could really use the distraction.

She’s about halfway through emphasizing the heart around a pair of initials when she notices a kid standing at the edge of the table, and thinking it’s one of hers kinda grunts in acknowledgement before looking up to see it’s a nine year-old. A quiet-looking one, freckles and dark eyes, hair tucked behind her ears.

The kid grips the table like this is some great feat and then Sarah takes in Alison’s focus on a mess at the back of the room and realizes it’s an act of bravery as the kid inches a little closer.

“Where’s Beth?” she whispers, eyes impossibly big.

Sarah swallows. Pushes the pin into the wood. Glances to Alison again like they’re about to be thrown in some dungeon for even breathing Beth’s name.

“What have they told you?” she whispers back as her heart races.

The kid opens her mouth and then freezes as Alison clears her throat and is suddenly right behind her, nudging her back to the tables with a stern look to Sarah.

Sarah doesn’t even know what she was going to say; either the kids got a lie or they didn’t, just waking up to find Alison in charge and no sign of their own counselor, clearly not going to have heard the truth. She’s not going to be the one to stab them with that. She can’t even tell her own mother.

The kid watches her from her busy table while her fingers fumble with the crinkly shit as if Sarah might blink out a response in Morse Code if she stares long enough and Sarah wonders what kind of games Beth played with her kids – if she taught them to look for answers in secret places or if this child just picked up on it on her own.

She wouldn’t put it past Beth to do that, actually. Let them know the world holds secrets and give them the tools to unearth them. _This is what you need to look for. This is how you dig it up._

She thinks Beth once mentioned wanting to be a cop, or Paul mentioned that she’d said it, or Sarah dreamt it up in those months following coming home with six tons of guilt sitting in her chest. She could see her as a detective. Or a spy, maybe, working both sides, leaving strategic clues in her wake. Sarah wonders if she should have been looking. If Beth would even think that far in advance.

(She hasn’t been able to ask if anyone found a note. She kind of doesn’t want to know; what it would say, or what it wouldn’t.)

(One outcome says Beth planned it. The other says she didn’t. Sarah hasn’t let herself consider either.)

There’s a drop of blood on the table now and she realizes the thumbtack’s in her fingertip, unable to even feel it. Alison slows to a stop and gives her a disapproving frown.

“You know you could be helping instead of fooling around,” she snips.

Sarah means to say something snappy but just stares back with an ache in her chest.

 _How can you stand it_ , she wants to ask. _Pretending nothing’s wrong. When we still don’t know if she’s-_

God, she could be thinking of a corpse and she wouldn’t even know it.

Alison yanks the thumbtack out of her skin. Sarah’s eyes are wet.

“Stop it,” Alison hisses. “Don’t. You _can’t_.”

Sarah nods, wipes her tears, but it does nothing for the burning or the lump in her throat. Alison shuts her eyes and then there’s something soft when she opens them.

“I’m sorry it had to be you, Sarah,” she murmurs, bending down to ensure she’s not overheard.

She takes in a sharp breath and Sarah suddenly understands that Alison had expected to be the one to find her; had prepared herself for the inevitable, and then it wasn’t her at all, and she had to hear it from someone who probably doesn’t even know Beth’s last name.

Beth was- Beth _is_ -

Sarah can’t even understand that kind of everything.

 _I’m sorry_ , she wants to say. It sounds like a funeral in her head.

Alison’s hand is cold as she stops the trembling of Sarah’s lip.

Get through the day, Alison seems to be urging her. But there’s an After, Sarah wants to tell her, as if she possibly doesn’t know this herself, having stared down the end so far in advance it probably feels like she caused it. How can they get through the next hour. How can they get through the next five minutes.

Alison walks away.

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel sees Paul once more that morning as he’s leading his boys across the soccer field, heading out to tennis with a stoicism that hitches in her chest. His cheek seems more like a shadow than anything against the overcast sky and she thinks again of Sarah’s hand, somehow taking the brunt of her own anger in what Rachel’s sure is a reflection of how most things go in Sarah’s life. She just seems so much like self-destruction. Rachel can’t stand it.

Last night she’d expected- They’d just sat in silence. She’d chased Sarah through the woods and found her with Paul pinned to a tree and that made sense, the need for action, but they came back to the cabin and Sarah just sat there. Sarah just held her hand.

Destruction would have been understandable, after cleaning off all that blood. Rachel expected to continue running, to keep pushing forward, pushing against it, for Sarah to be unable to slow down.

This is the wrong response.

Rachel doesn’t know what to do with it.

(Her father cried, at first. Moaned. _Fell_. Right there in the hospital, on his knees like a martyr. Rachel wanted to slap him.)

(She didn’t. She picked him up. She bit through her tongue.)

 _You know that feeling like you’re drowning in it_ , Rachel had wanted to say at breakfast, but Sarah was vacantly cradling a cup of tea and Rachel had to focus on the acrid taste of her black coffee to stop her hands from trembling.

She looked… There was no lipstick, no sharp pull of her mouth, but she looked _so much_ like Rachel’s-

She looked like that first year in Canada.

Like the cold, empty kitchen. The windows rattling in the wind. Toast burnt on the counter and Rachel trying not to make a sound.

(Don’t set her off, her father had said. Be good for her while I’m at work.)

And then Paul walked by and Sarah looked as if she might run after him and Rachel wanted to tell her this is not something she should feel guilty about, this is just what happens when boys let go of the girls they love, they get what they deserve, but Sarah would see herself as the fault for that as well and Rachel couldn’t do that to her. She could barely leave her to take her girls to the lake.

“Do you wanna hear a joke?” Clementine asks on the walk to lunch, and her voice is light, but from the look on her face Rachel can tell she’s picked up on something serious passing through the counselors.

Has anyone told Beth’s children where she went? Rachel saw them with Alison earlier, all ten trailing behind her like one large sullen shadow. There was an empty place next to Alison at breakfast. Rachel tried not to look.

“Sure,” she says, unable to even curl her lips into something close to a smile.

Clementine’s walking right beside her, having jogged to make it to the front of the group and leaving Julisa and Isabella C. behind. Her hand bumps against Rachel’s as if she might consider taking it but Rachel knows her hands are still cold, ice from letting go on the porch this morning, and Clementine settles on grazing the band of her watch.

“Okay,” she says. “So. Why do ducks have flat feet?”

Rachel considers taking back her _sure_. “Why?”

“To stamp out forest fires,” Clementine says, a smile stretching her lips as Rachel frowns.

“I don’t-”

“And why do elephants have flat feet?” Clementine continues.

“Why,” Rachel says.

Clementine decides to risk it, curling her hand around Rachel’s fingers. “To stamp out flaming ducks.”

She grins and Rachel lets out a small chuckle.

“That’s clever,” Rachel says.

“My dad told it to me,” Clementine replies as she swings their arms. “Wanna hear another? He has lots of jokes; he tells me in the car. One time I laughed so hard Coke came out of my nose and there’s still a stain on the carpet.”

“I… think I’ll sit with this joke for now, thank-you,” Rachel says, but she’s smiling a little, somehow not minding the stickiness of Clementine’s hand in her own.

It feels momentarily like a tableau of siblinghood, or as much as she imagined from the books she read when she was younger; Clementine smiles up at her quite pleasantly and her curls bounce with each step as she moves their arms and Rachel wonders, briefly, what it would have been like to possess a sibling of her own. Would she be softer? Would she know how to care in that teasing way?

She thinks of catching Sarah on the phone a week ago, voice gentle and warm as she sought comfort from someone who knew her enough to know how to provide it.

There would be someone who had witnessed the same events as Rachel; who would understand, without asking, what certain words or images meant to her. They’d see a tube of lipstick crushed on the tile and know.

Sarah’s lucky. Sarah can phone home and someone will be there to let her cry.

Rachel tries not to react when Clementine lets go of her hand, running into the mess hall lunch line before she has a chance to dismiss her. Her face pulls slightly but she catches most of it, twisting it into a reaction to the menu, conscious of every part of her body as she moves into line behind the rest of her girls.

It’s pasta salad today. Everything seems congealed, cardboard, but she takes a portion regardless, knowing she has to put _something_ in her stomach. Even if Beth’s seat next to Alison remains unfilled. Even if she catches sight of Delphine at her table and it’s like spotting a ghost.

She sits next to Sarah because she doesn’t know how to do anything else, dropping down hard and too fast and nearly slipping off the bench completely before Sarah puts a hand on her back to steady her. The touch burns; Rachel tries not to think about it. Not today.

“How was canoeing?” Sarah asks. It comes out easy but she’s staring into the depths of her tea.

Rachel wants to tell her she considered flipping her canoe just to try to shake the numbness, but it was only a momentary thought and she wouldn’t have done it and it feels too obtuse to say out loud anyway.

“Fine,” she says.

Sarah nods. She seems to understand the word’s intention.

Rachel can’t think of a question to ask in return.

They both have a plateful of pasta salad in front of them but Sarah ignores it where Rachel busies herself scraping it all away from the edges in a perfect circle. She’s heard certain people respond to grief by over-eating – she wonders what that must be like, needing to fill yourself, when she feels entirely stuffed by the heaviness of this already. And then she wonders if this could be considered grief, and if she should ascribe that word to a situation that may or may not end in loss.

But surely either way there’s a loss here – she can’t imagine seeing Beth again in any capacity and the thought lodges itself sharply in her throat. Her eyes water. She hurries to blink it back.

Sarah’s hand is on her wrist, soft.

( _She’d cut her wrists, Rachel. Walked into the lake._ )

Rachel inhales.

“We came to Canada when I was eight,” she says, the first thing to come out of her mouth.

It surprises her; she’s not usually one to offer up information, but Sarah considers it and meets her eye and puts forward her own _twelve_.

She pictures Sarah at twelve years old, all scowl and wild hair, not unlike Quinn who’s sitting sullenly at the end of the table. Maybe they moved in summer, maybe it was warm and yellow, but Rachel imagines her standing in snow, staring angrily at a slush-filled street. Nothing about Toronto ever feels clean.

“I hated it,” Rachel says, smiling when Sarah does.

She’d been miserable; always wet, always cold, hiding in the toilets at school so they wouldn’t be able to stare at her. Give it time, her mother had said. And yet.

“Me too,” Sarah says. She toys with the string of her teabag. “Didn’t think it’d ever feel like home.”

They hold eye contact and Sarah’s face is unguarded, soft where Rachel expects obstinacy, neither going to mention how much it feels like home now. Rachel’s spent over half her life here; the girl she left overseas seems like an entirely separate person. _I used to write letters to her_ , she considers telling Sarah. _In my head. To let her know how terribly everything changes_.

There’s a sudden weight on Rachel’s other side and she looks over to see Sahar pressed up against her, having scooted down the bench from where she’d been sitting with Marlow. Sarah gives Sahar a little smile. Sahar glances to Rachel before smiling back.

“Clementine wants to know if we can play outside for quiet hour,” Sahar says, taking a bite of the apple she brought with her.

Rachel’s not sure if she’ll be a better or worse witch today all things considered and finds herself watching Sarah’s bruised hand finally acknowledge the fork.

“We’ll be outside today,” Sarah offers, and Rachel can’t help but hear it as a plea whether it was intended as such or not. “The girls want me to braid hair. And make bracelets. Uh, _they_ want to make bracelets. Not me. I’m rubbish at those for some reason.”

Sahar’s smile grows in excitement. “Could you braid my hair?”

She pulls the length of her dark hair over her shoulder, the silky-smooth tresses shining under the fluorescent lights.

“For sure,” Sarah says. “If Rachel brings you guys out.”

Rachel stabs her fork into a piece of pasta and tries not to think about the ease of her name in Sarah’s mouth. How it sounds, almost, like she’s been saying it forever.

“I’ll allow it,” she says with an overstated sigh.

Sahar beams in gratitude and then leans around Rachel’s back to fully look at Sarah, who catches on and shifts as well. “Maybe you could teach Rachel how to braid,” she conspires. “She’s terrible.”

Sarah muffles her laughter with a hand, raising her eyebrows at Rachel before agreeing to it. Rachel pretends to ignore them both and shoves pasta in her mouth. Absolute cardboard. It’s no better than chewing sawdust.

“It’s nice weather, at least,” Sarah says with a lift of her shoulders, and Rachel realizes she hadn’t even noticed.

Everything’s felt so entirely grey she was half convinced it was raining; she can’t imagine having to stare up at a blue sky after a night like that. She’d snuff out the sun if she could. Anything to pull it back to the kind of dreadful weather this day deserves. Sleet. Hail. A thunder to tremble in her bones, harsh and heavy as it should be.

 _I’m sorry_ , she wants to say. _I miss you_.

Beth. Of course. But it had been sunny the day she found her mother too.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s warm, apparently; Rachel’s girls are all in shorts, spread out in the grass with cards and books and paper, several in the trees that make up their imaginary house, smelling thickly of sunscreen and sweat and Rachel still can’t tell if the sun’s out. Maybe she’ll burn. Maybe it would feel like _something_.

She’s been doing her best not to notice that Sarah’s wearing the t-shirt and sweatpants she changed into after last night’s shower. Sarah sits on the other side of the picnic table, cross-legged and braiding a girl’s hair (Daniela, Quinn’s apparent nemesis) with Madeleine and Quinn on her left, and somehow looks serene in the warmth of the afternoon – lips pressed together in concentration, fingers moving swift and gentle.

She doesn’t live with her sister, Rachel remembers. She wonders how Sarah leaned to braid so well with only her own hair for practice.

(Rachel cut her hair before her tenth birthday. It never held a curl after that.)

“That’s what I want my hair to look like,” Sahar had said when Sarah started braiding Daniela’s, watching Sarah part the hair down the middle for twin braids.

Sahar’s been watching with captivation as Sarah finishes the second French braid and continues to nudge Rachel to ensure she’s also paying attention. They could very much be doing something – Rachel could be reading and Sahar could be making one of those bracelets that occupy Quinn and Madeleine and a few others in the grass but instead the focus is on Sarah’s expert fingers and Rachel can’t stand it.

She can’t stand sitting here with cold hands as Beth- she doesn’t even _know_. As Beth stagnates. As Beth either is or isn’t.

Sarah catches Rachel’s eye just as Madeleine asks Rachel, “What colors do you want?”

Rachel pauses, unsure if she should be reacting to the question in Sarah’s eyes or the gesture to the rainbow skeins on the picnic table. And then she realizes what Madeleine’s really saying and looks to the dirty bracelet around Sarah’s wrist and her breath catches as she takes in the source of the copper-brown stains. _God, Sarah_ , she thinks. _How did we not notice before._

“Rachel likes silver,” Sarah offers on Rachel’s silence.

Her hands still as she follows Rachel’s line of sight and then she’s glancing back to her with wide eyes.

Madeleine flicks through the thread, unaware. “We only have grey and it’s not that pretty. What about red?”

Sarah lets go of the strands of hair and the braid unravels in front of her.

“Sarah!” Daniela says as her hand clamps to her head to try and save it.

Sarah startles and looks between Rachel and Madeleine and the back of Daniela’s head and then manages to pull out an apology as she grabs the hair to start all over again. “It slipped,” she excuses. “Don’t worry, it’ll be better the second time.”

“Not red,” Rachel tells Madeleine, who frowns a little but moves on to other colors.

“White?” Sahar says. She points at a pearly skein and then at the lilac one next to it. “That one too, it’s pretty.”

Quinn looks up from the mess of knots whose end she has taped to the table in front of her. “Give her black too, like Sarah. She seems pretty dark.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, focus still on Daniela’s second braid, and Rachel takes the opportunity to give Quinn a particularly sharp look. She has no idea why Sarah seems to favor this child. (She does, actually. And is grateful she never knew Sarah when she was young.)

Madeleine gathers the colors and then pulls out a greyish-blue for good measure. The bundle looks, unbearably, like Sarah’s knuckles, skin tightened white amongst the bruise as she grips the strands of hair. At least Rachel will have something to burn when the summer’s over. She can’t say she’ll ever wear it.

“Let me measure,” Madeleine says with the unwound black.

Rachel dutifully holds out her wrist and can’t breathe as Madeleine’s hot fingers graze her skin.

“Nearly there,” Sarah says of Daniela’s braid when a hand comes back to check.

“It’s gonna be beautiful,” Sahar says of both the braid and the bracelet.

Quinn snorts. “Gonna be ugly ‘cause it’s Rachel’s.”

Madeleine turns and slaps her.

Everyone freezes – Rachel expects chaos, expects raised voices, Quinn to retaliate, someone to say _something_ , but a slow smile creeps out across Sarah’s face as she turns her head to ignore it and it seems to signal to everyone else that it’s over. It’s done with. Quinn eyes Madeleine like a stepped-on cat but goes back to her terrible bracelet. Madeleine smirks to herself. Sahar throws her weight into Rachel’s side and Rachel, shocked, laughs.

She cackles and no one says a word.

They’re sitting here _braiding hair_.

There should be consequences. There should be an aftermath. Sarah should be falling apart and Rachel should be keeping it together and someone should unblur all the lines and let them step back to someplace where they can make sense of it.

(Just give it a couple deep breaths, her mother used to say. Rachel doesn’t know _how_.)

The braid finishes and Sahar takes her turn, leaving Rachel with no one on her side of the bench. She should be happy; she should bask in the personal space, not finding herself wishing for even Evie to come join her simply for the body heat. She should stop watching the bloodstained bracelet around Sarah’s wrist as if it might come back to life. She should breathe. She should breathe.

She should-

She barely makes it back through the cabin to the toilets before the vomit comes up. Wet on her chin, painting the sink nearest the doorway. Her knees drop out underneath her and she clings to the edge of the counter with her face pressed to her forearm. Eyes shut. Mouth stinging. Her teeth chatter.

Breathe in, she wills herself. And out. She focuses on the coolness of the air hitting the back of her throat. Everything tastes like bile.

Footsteps hit the floorboards a few minutes later, soft and unlike Sarah’s before Rachel remembers her boots are still drying on the porch from last night.

Sarah crouches down beside her, a hand on her back.

“Sahar’s braid,” Rachel manages to gasp out through another roll of nausea.

“Madeleine’s finishing,” Sarah says. Her hand rubs circles through Rachel’s shirt. “You should see the nurse. You’re scary pale.”

Rachel lowers her chin so her forehead’s pressed against her arm and forces herself to open her eyes. Sarah looks terrified; Rachel hates herself for doing that to her.

“You know we can’t afford another counselor out right now,” Rachel says. Her voice is surprisingly steady.

Sarah’s mouth opens helplessly but then she nods and exhales and runs a hand through her hair in frustration. “At least lie down for a bit? I’ll watch your kids.”

Rachel relents with a shiver. She can’t look away from Sarah’s fearful eyes.

“Let me clean you up,” Sarah says, pushing off the ground to grab paper towel.

She wets it and drops down again and her touch is gentle as she wipes Rachel’s chin, a hand smoothing back Rachel’s hair. It’s a gesture Rachel hasn’t felt since her mother and she hopes Sarah blames the wetness in her eyes on just having vomited.

Sarah gets her water. Sarah takes her hand to help her up and doesn’t flinch when she spits into the sink.

“This is disgusting,” she says dryly. Sarah chuckles.

“We’ve all been there,” she says. “At least you managed to stay cute.”

Rachel’s mouth opens slightly with a wave of something that very much isn’t nausea.

Sarah flushes in the silence and clears her throat and starts moving them out of the washroom with a gruff “Lie down, all right?” and seems more than happy to focus on getting Rachel to her room before heading back to clean up the sink.

Rachel decides not to mention she could have made it without holding Sarah’s hand.

She also decides not to acknowledge the ache it birthed in her when Sarah let go.

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel doesn’t sleep so much as stare at the top corner of her window for thirty-five minutes, focusing everything on trying to remember a passage word for word and berating herself when she slips up.

( _And here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night-_ )

Her mother would recite full pages; the entirety of books. She’d stand in front of the couch with gusto and perform each sentence with so much feeling Rachel often wondered if her mother had written them herself, curled up amongst the cushions still sleep-soft and malleable.

( _These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes – how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I…_ )

There was such a tempo, such a rhythm. Rachel would tap her fingers. Her mother would laugh; would gather her golden hair in her hands and let it fall and the sun would stream through the lace curtains and Rachel, in her innocence, believed this was something that could go on forever. That she would never hear of Canada. That she would never lose.

( _I feel. I- feel. How shall I negate this world whose-_ )

She was such a foolish child. How could she not know better? How could she not understand, at six, at seven, that these things are only ours to lose someday?

( _Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is-_ )

Thirty-five minutes of forgetting the words. She tells herself it’s easier than forgetting what’s happened, forgetting how Sarah trembled against her on that rock still covered in Beth’s blood. She needs to know they made it through.

( _Mine_.)

She needs to know it’s possible, if not for herself then for Sarah, who looked at her in the washroom like she’d just shattered across the linoleum. Sarah who has the same painful look in her eyes as she returns Rachel’s kids before the next activity, a hand on Rachel’s arm as they part. Rachel nods and takes her girls and doesn’t look back. She tells herself Sarah doesn’t expect her to.

It doesn’t quite hit her at first, as she settles her girls on the bench in the rec hall, that she was supposed to split this activity block with the nine year-olds. Sarah would have remembered immediately; Sarah would have seen the empty second bench and placed half her girls on it to fill the room and wouldn’t be staring at the emptiness now like it’s somehow gotten the best of her. Rachel can’t figure out how to look away.

“I thought we were supposed to be working on our thing for the talent show,” Olivia snips as the specialist comes in with a forced smile.

Rachel wonders what everyone’s been told; if the rest of the staff knows what took place or if they’re all just operating under the knowledge that Beth suddenly isn’t here anymore and her girls are currently stuck with Alison.

The specialist glances to Rachel with a second of helplessness and Rachel decides it’s the latter.

“Sort of,” the specialist says, her gestures smaller than usual. “Kind of an adapted program today actually. Mostly working on…”

Rachel tunes out, a stern look at Olivia, then heads for the bench she and Beth shared when they were both here for dance – it occurs to her as she sits down that that was the first and only conversation she had with Beth. She tells herself it can’t be the last. For a moment she becomes the type of person who believes the universe doesn’t work like that, and it’s a comfort. Then she returns to reality.

Her girls are fine with the adapted programming, it turns out, all of them grinning at some point, no one mentioning it’s essentially what they did with Alison’s group two days ago. Maybe they too feel the chasm that opened up overnight; Rachel can barely see across it to confirm that yes, it’s only been two days since Beth introduced herself. She wonders if that was a planned action – if Beth had a list of things to accomplish before- before leaving, and that handshake was also some form of apology.

 _Nice to finally meet you_ , she’d said. As if she had every intention of doing so, and then she did it, and the next night…

It came so quickly. Rachel can’t imagine how much agony Beth must have brought with her to need that escape so soon. How long did she consider it? What was the final straw? And to do it in the lake, of all places- Rachel hates to read meaning into something that might have none but every small piece of it feels significant in a way she can’t stand.

She doesn’t even know the girl.

Why can’t she remember that?

( _You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases._ )

She was never as good as her mother at memorizing. She was never as good as her father at reading aloud – it always felt too much like trying to wear them as a costume, pulling their skin over her shoulders and struggling under the weight. In Canada she developed a stutter. It took her father months to iron it out of her.

( _At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multi-colored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me-_ )

Up on stage the girls take turns playing out their greatest sorrows, faces each a mimicry of sadness they’ve seen on screens or on people they don’t seem to believe real. Rachel wants to tell them no one weeps like that without feeling it carving out their chests; that it bends them at the knees and they reach out to catch themselves on anything. _Good_ , the specialist tells them. _Sierra, how are you going to help her_?

Rachel presses her palms against the bench, flattens out her fingers. In her mind she can see the open pages of the book and the words line up like soldiers. Her father’s handwriting crowds the margins. It’s all shapes, but she tries to push past it, clear the fog and find each letter she’s forgetting, hearing what she does know echoed in her mother’s voice even though her mother wouldn’t even crack the book’s spine.

( _You tell me… But you tell me- of an invisible planetary system_ of an invisible planetary system _in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus_ in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. _You explain this world to me with an image._ You explain…)

Sierra seems to believe helping Marlow means stroking her hair like she’s some arthritic housecat. It’s a soft touch, at least. Marlow continues to wail. Rachel continues to conjure up the open book, sentences cloaked in graphite, trying to step around her father’s chaotic handwriting before realizing he’s written out the last of it for her, the words she’d struggled to remember yesterday over that puzzle.

( _You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know._ )

(Her mother reads it all back to her.)

She shuts the book.

Her girls reconcile on stage. It isn’t raining but she believes it to be for a moment, believes Beth to be sitting beside her, hand hitting cold air as she shifts to tell her to stay.

She can’t find anything good in it taking this long for anyone to tell them whether or not Beth made it. It’s half past three – surely Sarah must have realized this as well. She pictures Sarah sitting on the dock, watching her kids do laps to the buoy and back again, telling herself she isn’t essentially staring out at a grave.

No one should have let Sarah go swimming today, not after being the one to find Beth. Rachel should have thought to switch with her. Or told Paul to, or one of the other male counselors, or even Cosima. Although Cosima likely knows; she can’t imagine Delphine would be able to hold that in. Loving someone seems to mean sharing the worst with them.

“Did you like my scene?” Sahar asks, startling Rachel out of her thoughts.

The girls are all back by the benches now, gearing up for one last game before Rachel’s supposed to take them to the fields. Sahar’s snuck away to get Rachel’s feedback and Rachel finds her heart twisting.

“I did,” she says, taking Sahar’s hand to give it a squeeze. “It was wonderful.”

“I thought of you when I was doing it,” Sahar says with a smile before heading back to the group.

It takes Rachel to the end of the game to realize Sahar had done some scene about monsters. And that Sahar was the one who faced them.

Fear, she believes, was the prompt. Of course Sahar would turn that into bravery.

 

* * *

 

 

Sarah has a hard, permanent lump in her throat by dinnertime. Cement, it feels like, dragging skin raw with each breath, undissolvable by tea or water or anything else she tries to force down. She sits next to Rachel again. She tells herself it’s convenience.

Rachel asks about swimming in that vague, uninterested way of hers that Sarah currently appreciates, nodding when Sarah shrugs. They swam. Sarah couldn’t stick a toe in the water. Three kids asked her to wrap them in their towels because she apparently does it best. (She swallowed back an aborted sob at the feel of their slick, cold skin.)

She’d thought smelling the lake again in their hair would churn her stomach. She doesn’t know how to tell Rachel it made her some sort of homesick instead.

“You feeling better?” she asks because she wants to pretend Rachel’s vomit and losing Beth aren’t related.

She freezes. _Losing Beth_.

Rachel sees it in her eyes and touches her knuckles to Sarah’s hand.

“Lying down helped,” Rachel says. It’s such a lie. Sarah can’t call her on it because the lump of cement thickens.

She’s not even sure what’s on the plate in front of her – she’d followed her girls through the line blindly, hands reaching and taking by memory. Quinn sits on her other side tonight and keeps bumping her with her elbow. She’s been close since touching Sarah’s bruises; a constant, quiet presence, something Sarah would expect from Madeleine or Naomi, seemingly unfazed by her earlier slap and Sarah outright ignoring it.

She should have said something. She knows that, but she also really wanted to see if it would work – if Quinn would take it and learn from it and keep her mouth shut the next time. God knows Sarah learned that lesson young.

Green beans, she thinks she’s eating. Wax. It all collects at the lump and it’s a wonder she hasn’t choked yet.

Rachel’s eating too, moving slowly but efficiently like a programmed machine. Sarah doesn’t have to ask to know she can’t taste it either. She saw Delphine consuming soup earlier when taking her girls to the table and she wore the same blank expression. Like they’re all barely trudging through.

Delphine has to have told Cosima – Sarah can’t imagine she wouldn’t, but Cosima hasn’t arrived yet and Sarah hasn’t run into her today and wouldn’t even really know how to ask in front of the kids. She wonders if Delphine cleaned all that blood off alone. If anyone did anything for the mess they left behind the cabin.

“What’s the last book you read?” Rachel asks suddenly, and Sarah feels Quinn stiffen at her voice.

Rachel pushes the corners of her mouth out into what might be a smile and Sarah realizes that it’s a signal; that she’s frowning, hard, to the point of her facial muscles hurting, and Rachel’s trying to pull it out of her.

She relaxes her face into what she hopes looks a bit more pensive. And then has to reach for an answer to Rachel’s question.

“Uhh, Wise Blood,” she says, lifting her shoulders. Rachel tilts her head in surprise. “It was for school, I didn’t really understand it. A lot of… religious stuff.”

Quinn knocks into her arm. “Christian stuff?”

Sarah looks to Rachel and then to Quinn, not sure what to make of Rachel’s interest or Quinn’s concern.

“Sort of,” she says. “A kind of backwards way of it, I think. I don’t really remember my teacher’s notes.”

Rachel nods as if she’d like to listen to anything Sarah has to say on the topic but Quinn continues, frowning.

“Is this high school? Is it hard?” she asks.

“Not if you study,” Rachel tells her as Sarah says, “It can be.”

Quinn shifts her frown to Rachel for a lingering minute then places a look of consideration on Sarah, ending it with a decisive nod.

“It can be,” Rachel echoes, but Quinn’s turned away already.

Of course Rachel would have breezed through her classes; Sarah had that pegged from the moment she first saw her. Rachel could probably tell as well that first day that Sarah spent most of her time skipping class or in detention. They embody their stereotypes in embarrassing ways.

“Flannery O’Connor was criticizing religion,” Rachel says quietly, stabbing a green bean and then dropping it again. “I’m sure you discussed the attributes of Southern Gothic literature.”

“I’m sure we did,” Sarah says, shifting in her seat. She’s also sure she missed that day.

Rachel screeches her fork against the plate. “The grotesque, religious hysteria, slavery…”

“Listen,” Sarah says, “I barely read the book. Tried to watch the movie but couldn’t really get into it. I’m not really… Books aren’t so much my speed.”

Her cheeks feel hot, but she realizes she forgot about the lump in her throat for a good two minutes, and that was two minutes of not thinking about Beth. Remembering sinks her stomach to her knees.

Rachel turns on the bench so she’s half facing her.

“That’s fine,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Her head is tilted slightly, watching. Sarah isn’t sure what to make of her contemplative expression. If there’s anything to it other than needing a distraction.

“I liked Holes,” she offers, quiet. “My brother made me read it.”

Last Fall, after a month of brooding; he’d tossed it at her from the doorway and threatened to tell S about her vodka stash if she didn’t read at least half of it. It was from his school library. The time before that, the weeks after Vic, he’d brought her the bloody Boxcar Children. _Remember when we planned to run away_ , he’d said. All soft and she couldn’t hold onto her anger.

She misses him. It cuts in her chest.

“Sarah,” Rachel says abruptly. She’s staring over Sarah’s shoulder, at the doors, and Sarah follows her line of sight.

“The director’s back,” she says. Heart racing.

He has the sleeves of his jacket rolled up, forearms tense as he searches the mess hall. He’s at Delphine’s table first. Sarah gulps back water. The two of them appear across from Sarah a second later and he motions for her to join him.

“Go,” Rachel urges. Sarah hadn’t realized she wasn’t moving.

Rachel captures her fingers as she stands, tangling them in her own for a moment before letting go. Sarah does her best not to look at her as she leaves. She tries not to catch sight of any of her kids or Paul across the room or Alison stiff and straight with the empty spot beside her.

She follows Delphine. The three of them slip outside.

“Sorry I couldn’t get back sooner,” the director says.

They’re directly under one of the yellow lamps and Sarah can’t stand the unearthly glow it casts across his skin. Corpse-like, she thinks. Jaundiced. She looks to Delphine and finds Delphine watching her with perfectly round eyes.

“Beth lost a lot of blood,” the director says, moving to push up his sleeves but just getting skin. “She’s okay, but they’d like to keep her for a bit just to be sure.”

“That’s good,” Delphine says. She grabs Sarah’s hand.

“Good,” Sarah echoes, unable to let go of the image of Beth collapsing in the sand.

That’s where all the blood went; it’s in the sand and on the path and in the dirt behind Delphine’s cabin, staining the earth where they tried so hard to keep her talking.

But she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Sarah wants to tell Rachel.

The lump in her throat is the size of a fist.

“Her parents are with her now,” the director tells them.

Sarah bristles; she thinks of something Paul said, of Beth hating them. They’re the last people Beth would want with her right now. She’d want… she’d want Paul, of course. She’d want Alison. Sarah wonders if there’s anyone else in her life or if it’s as overwhelmingly small as it feels. Surely Beth has friends from school, from her various sports teams. Sarah wishes she knew who to call. She wishes Alison was out here right now. She wishes Delphine would stop staring at her like she’s about to break.

“They’d like her to return to camp as soon as the doctor okays it,” the director says, and he looks as pained by this as Delphine does. “To honor her commitments.”

“That’s bullshit,” Sarah says.

Delphine shoots her a look. Sarah apologizes but they all know she’s right.

The director wrings his hands and Sarah wants to ask him to take a few steps back into the shadows, to get out of this awful light. To make this feel even a tiny bit less like swallowing glass.

“This is no one’s idea of an ideal situation,” he says.

Delphine’s shaking her head, soft and slow and terrible and Sarah wants to hug her and push her into the dusky shadows as well and can only snatch back her hand as the director leads them both back into the mess hall.

“We’re so appreciative of everything you girls did for her,” he tells them as they blink in the harsh light. “We’ll be informing your parents tonight, at the Childs’ request.”

He says it and it sounds heroic. Sarah wants to fill his arms with the weight of Beth’s drenched body.

He leaves them for the upper staff table and Delphine hesitates for a moment before leaving as well and Sarah stands helplessly in the mouth of the doorway, staring out at the crowd, unable to stop herself from nodding to Paul at the back of the room. He sags against the wall like waiting to hear was all that was holding him up, and then she finds it in herself to return to her own table.

“She’s alive, she’ll live,” she whispers hard at Rachel’s ear.

She drops onto the bench. Rachel presses her lips together, understanding this isn’t a celebration.

 _Her parents are making her come back_ , she tells Rachel later, in the dusk as they’re heading to the cabins. _Rachel, she hates them. I hate them_.

Rachel only briefly takes her hand and they stumble through the trees in silence.

 

* * *

 

 

Sarah sits on the picnic table to smoke. The girls could wake up and see her through the window at any moment, but she sort of wants that to happen; wants them to learn their counselors aren’t infallible. Wants them to be disappointed in her.

What does happen is Rachel appears, in sleep-shorts and a weird silvery chemise, barefoot and joining her without a word. Just sliding herself onto the tabletop like she doesn’t even mind the splinters.

Sarah exhales. The pack of cigarettes is balanced on her knee. Rachel doesn’t reach out to take it.

It’s Rachel’s picnic table too; it’s in front of her half of the cabin, it’s her girls that would see Sarah smoking, it’s her door that opened up to find Sarah cross-legged in the moonlight. She wonders if Rachel’s ever going to ask why she always takes this one – why Rachel keeps ending up alone at Sarah’s table, Rachel’s girls filling those bent trees.

(She’d tell her, too. It’s a stupid spider. Size of her fist, scared the living shit out of her last summer and she wasn’t going to risk sitting on its home again this year.)

(Maybe the thing likes Rachel. She is a witch, after all.)

“Any one of those girls could spot you out here,” Rachel says finally, sounding too tired to truly care.

Sarah brings the cigarette to her lips and watches Rachel’s eyes follow it, lingering after the cigarette pulls away.

“You should join me,” is all she says.

Like these aren’t Rachel’s to begin with, like she’s been doing this for years. The truth is it still hurts her lungs. The truth is that’s why she likes it.

She thinks about the first time she smoked them, after Paul grabbing her arm like he had anything worth saying, Alison’s snake eyes on her so quickly she could feel the singe of her skin. It had been about Beth. She smoked to stop thinking about Beth. She went off to hide the smoke and found Beth.

_I didn’t know you smoke._

_I don’t, they’re_ -

Rachel shakes her head.

Sarah stares at her without trying to hide it, open and sore, absorbing the milky softness of her skin and the shine to her slightly tousled hair. It’s as if she rose from her bed without thinking and came straight to the table. Sarah didn’t make a noise, so maybe she did.

Rachel holds her hands in loose fists like she might need to strike at any moment, and she’s sitting in the same pose as Sarah, cross-legged, toes curled, a near mirror image on the top of the table. She’s taking the brunt of the moon; Sarah could be her shadow.

It feels all of a sudden like that hazy Thursday night.

(Beth was a Thursday night. There are two Thursday nights. Sarah can’t-)

The line Rachel said, about the dark. She tries to remember it – Rachel’s watching her like she’s some caged animal, a starved one in the corner who knows the lock is broken but can’t turn away from the wall. Rachel’s eyes search her. Soft. Merciful.

Sarah inhales smoke to the point of bursting then lets it all go.

She can hear Rachel’s voice that night, silk in the prickling shadows, a heavy cloud around her.

“That thing you read to me,” she says. Rachel’s head tilts. “What did it mean?”

_This darkness is my light._

Rachel’s hand stretches out flat across her knee and Sarah instinctively looks to her own hand, the bruises just smudges in the dark.

“Well, the whole book is about absurdism,” Rachel says, looking off to Sarah’s left and into the trees. “The idea that seeking meaning in this world with all its variables is absurd and that we will never truly know. Ah, in brief.”

“Light reading then, yeah?” Sarah says wryly.

Rachel’s lips pull slightly into a smile. “Of course. The part I read to you was essentially… Are you familiar with the myth of Sisyphus? The rock up the mountain?”

Sarah shrugs, only now noticing the cigarette’s burned its way down to the filter. She stubs it out on a knot in the wood of the table.

“Sure,” she says.

They did mythology in at least one of her classes, if not a few. She remembers a rock the same way she remembers Medusa; it felt suffocating at the time, trying to imagine experiencing it. Being condemned to… well she supposes all myths are just someone being condemned to something, the gods either angry or bored or wanting.

Rachel nods and eyes her, head tilted, as if trying to glean what exactly she’s retained.

“Well Camus equates Sisyphus forever pushing the rock up the mountain to the human condition, understanding the futility of his actions as the rock rolls back down each time,” she says and Sarah frowns. “You know, we continue to seek out meaning, knowing we’ll know nothing for sure and that even knowing can’t stop us from dying. And yet looking past that, accepting that we won’t know, that we live in ignorance, in a darkness, is freeing.”

Rachel stops at Sarah’s scoff and her hand comes out as if she might reach for Sarah’s, falling short between them on the table.

“That’s supposed to be comforting,” Sarah asks. She can’t relax her brow.

She can’t even look at Rachel, who looks at her now like she’s glass, a thin layer of ice across a lake just waiting to be cracked through the middle.

“My father bought it for my mother,” Rachel says. And then she won’t look at Sarah either.

Sarah gives her something between a scowl and disbelief, pushing herself off the table to stand in the dewy grass. “Your father’s got some fucked up ideas on what a woman wants, no offence.”

“She was-” Rachel starts, but then cuts herself off and looks down at Sarah like this is somehow her fault.

Sarah steps back, hands shoved in the pockets of her sweatpants, heel hitting a rock embedded in the dirt and hating it for stupid Sisyphus and the ache it spurs up her ankle. It was a boulder, she remembers now. All the guy could do was roll it up and watch it fall and roll it up and watch it fall.

“So was he saying that Sisyphus was okay with it? Just pushing that boulder for the rest of his life?” she asks.

“For eternity,” Rachel corrects, pulling a knee up and leaning against it. “And more or less, yes. Happy, even.”

“That’s fucked up,” Sarah says. “You don’t…”

She holds the pack of cigarettes against her leg in her pocket, the flat edge soothing through fabric.

Rachel lifts her shoulders in a way that suggests she doesn’t find it too unreasonable, and all of a sudden she looks incredibly small and defenseless in her pyjamas just hugging her leg.

“I think if you’re truly miserable,” she says, cheek to her knee, watching Sarah like a shackled bird of prey, “it can be comforting to believe there’s no meaning to existing. That we just do, and there aren’t any answers, and it _is_ absurd. That it’s… a way out of being consumed by it, maybe.”

It sinks into Sarah like an ice bath and she brings the heel of her palm up to her temple and then through her hair to try and drag it out of her.

She realizes as Rachel shifts and straightens up into something unaffected that she knows nothing about Rachel, that she’s as much a stranger as Beth, and that maybe, in this conversation, in their conversation that Thursday night, Rachel was trying to tell her it could easily have been her Sarah pulled out of the water.

She finds herself staring at Rachel’s wrists, the bracelet Madeleine made her so much a gash across the skin.

Sarah’s own bracelet is still dark with blood that didn’t wash off; she tried four times after noticing it, scrubbing in the sink with industrial soap as if getting it out could reverse the whole night before. Rachel noticed it first.

“I wrote an essay on it,” Rachel says now, trying to undo the silence between them. “For my Philosophy class.”

“We haven’t slept,” Sarah says, like this could excuse it.

She hates that Rachel put it into words she could understand. She hates that when she’s stuck repeating grade twelve they’ll say Sisyphus and she’ll think of Rachel, sitting like a statue on a picnic table in the dark. She’ll think of pulling Beth from the water only to have her collapse in the sand. She’ll think of pine trees and the sickly scent of iron.

“Go to bed, Sarah,” Rachel says. She has her legs hanging off the edge of the table and she looks tall, impossibly long.

She doesn’t want the night to end. She wants to slap Rachel and have her stay and hear her explain everything Sarah couldn’t get the first time around, somehow knowing how to find the right words to slip through the mud in Sarah’s head.

“I’ll just think of Beth,” she admits.

Her hands are in her pockets again. She can still feel the rock underfoot and doesn’t know why she doesn’t move.

Rachel’s lips press together in sympathy. “I know. Go to bed anyway.”

Sarah never took a philosophy class, knowing it wasn’t something she could understand, knowing it would all pass right through her without anything sticking. She’d have the names and nothing else. And even those would be in the wrong places.

“She’s alive,” Rachel says when Sarah doesn’t budge.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. Her voice is thin. “But she’s coming back.”

She doesn’t know how long she stares at Rachel before Rachel leaves the table and comes over, hand firm on Sarah’s back as she directs her to the cabin and up the steps. They stand outside Sarah’s screen door for an unending minute. Sarah tries to listen to anything but Rachel’s breathing; tries not to watch her mouth attempt and fail to form a single word.

Finally Rachel brings a claw of a hand up to Sarah’s cheek, skin brushing skin.

“You’d find a way out of it, you know,” Rachel says. “If you were Sisyphus.”

It brings back the lump and Sarah’s stuck with it in her throat all night.

 

* * *

 

 

It rains in Sarah’s dream. She keeps trying to tell herself it wasn’t raining the night before when she found Beth, but it was, and it stopped, and as she dresses she wonders what would have happened if there hadn’t been a break in the showers.

Two options: she wouldn’t have gone out and no one would have been there to pull Beth from the water _or_ Beth wouldn’t have done it at all.

(There’s a third; Beth would have done it another night.)

(There’s a fourth. She’d have done it in the shower.)

(There’s a-)

It’s warm again. Sarah opts for cutoffs, runs her fingers through her hair. She hasn’t washed off the mascara and it’s starting to ring a smudgy grey, something she leaves for her girls to care about.

She realizes she hasn’t worn eyeliner in three weeks. And suddenly there are two Sarahs, standing on either side of a long drive to the campsite. Maybe S saw her change through the rearview mirror; maybe that’s why she kept glancing back, afraid she’d miss the switch.

Sarah wonders how she’s going to fit back into that girl once the summer’s over. If Felix will call her on it right away, the way her fear sticks out at sharp angles.

“There’s a bug in the shower,” Naomi informs her, toothbrush in her mouth.

Sarah kills it. Crushes it into the tile. Wipes it up like it wasn’t there at all.

They thank her for it, and she pretends she isn’t thinking about it the entire walk to breakfast, the way it died so quickly under her fist. It’s a _bug_. And then it’s a metaphor, and she gets to the table to find Rachel sitting at the opposite end like they’ve never so much as talked before.

“Sit next to me,” Quinn says. She has waffles and Sarah has waffles and it makes sense. Zohal joins them with an omelet.

They’re across from Madeleine and Afsheen, the two of them chatting about the ropes course, excited about the off-location trip, reminding Sarah that she’s staying behind to oversee fishing with Tony. Worms and hooks. Still, it seems better than standing around in the hot sun while kids tower thirty feet above her.

“Did Rachel like her bracelet?” Madeleine asks, interrupting her own conversation with a tap to the table.

Sarah stops vaguely pushing around her waffle and glances down the bench, where Rachel is so far away she might as well be a different person. She _looks_ different. Cold. Her shoulders square.

“As much as Rachel can love,” she says, and Quinn snickers.

Madeleine narrows her eyes at Quinn then looks back to Sarah. “I thought you guys were friends now. Or was yesterday just some break in the universe?”

“Likely,” Quinn says around a bite of waffle.

Sarah almost repeats it; Rachel won’t even look at her, hyper focused on her bowl of what looks to be yogurt like Sarah’s suddenly Medusa. Was it the whole book talk? Was it making fun of her dad? Sarah left her thinking things were good, that Rachel touched her cheek and they were _good_ , went to bed with her heart racing, eager to think about anything but Beth.

“We are,” Sarah says. She glances to Rachel again and then drops her shoulders. “Something like friends, at least.”

Quinn grins. “I’ve got a lot of those. Just ask Daniela.”

“Yeah but no _actual_ friends,” Madeleine says, and it might as well be the slap for the expression it puts in Quinn’s dark eyes.

“Madeleine,” Sarah warns.

She doesn’t have anything else, but Madeleine takes it with contrition.

Sarah goes back to poking at her waffle, half thinking it doesn’t have enough syrup, half convinced it’s too sweet for her to eat regardless. (Her sister would be disappointed.) She looks up again at the sound of heavy footsteps and wishes she didn’t as Paul passes by her end of the table, cheek definitely bruised, eyeing her like they’ve just come back from war together.

“I told Alison,” he says without stopping.

She catches his jaw tightening and a forcefulness to his easy movements and wants to tell him it wasn’t his place. Or that he shouldn’t have had to do that. Or that he doesn’t even know, and she can’t tell him anything past Beth surviving. He’s gone before she can think to open her mouth.

“Told Alison what?” Quinn asks. She frowns at Sarah and elbows her, as if this might get her question answered quicker.

“Nothing,” Sarah says. She pulls back her hair and exhales. “Just the… some schedule thing for today.”

It wasn’t his place. She should have been the one to do that. She should have been the one to tell Alison that it happened, not freeze up and throw it all on Rachel. Maybe the shock’s worn off and Rachel’s now back to her usual self, keeping Sarah at a stiff arm’s length.

“Are you and Paul still all kissy-kissy?” Quinn asks with a sneer on her face.

Naomi looks over from the other side of Afsheen, eyes still sleep-creased despite the hour and a half lie-in afforded to them by it being the weekend.

Sarah rolls her eyes. “ _No_ , Quinn, we’re not still all kissy-kissy.”

“But you were?” Madeleine looks at her with a maternal disappointment that plays across Naomi’s face as well.

“No,” Sarah says, grabbing her cup of tea. Her hand curled around it accentuates the bruises and she hates that they’re the same color as Paul’s. “Definitely not.”

 _He has a girlfriend_ , she wants to say, but she can’t even _think_ about Beth without nausea rising up.

“Boys suck,” Naomi says, entranced by the puddle of syrup on her plate.

Sarah lifts her tea and gives her a solid _amen_.

If she has any advice for them it’s to figure out how to hold onto themselves so they never lose even a piece in another person. She’s had eighteen years and she still doesn’t know how to come out whole.

“I never want a boyfriend,” Zohal says, and Sarah wants to tell her it’s the best way to stay intact, to avoid leaving herself in someone who doesn’t deserve her.

Boys never deserve the girls who love them. She _hates_ Paul. He talked to Beth after karaoke, Alison said; talked to her alone, could have said anything, a single word to push her over the edge, and he wasn’t the one to pull her from the water. He wasn’t the one to beg her to stay awake. Sarah should have punched him a second time.

She wants to march over and demand to know what he said to her – drag it out of him like fishhooks, letting them all barb his throat. He’d cry. He’d have to know what part he played in all this. She needs to know what part he played in all this.

(And what part she played, and why Beth let herself be pulled, and…)

“That’s the girl from the senior camp,” Madeleine’s saying, pointing at soft red curls at the table with Alison.

Sarah didn’t notice her come in, but suddenly Beth’s kids are with a new counselor, all as uneasy as Alison, eyeing this wolf in sheep’s clothing like they’re trying to find the teeth. Gracie, Sarah thinks her name is. The one who comes to campfires to take care of Krystal.

The rest of Sarah’s girls turn to look, faces a mix of confusion and distrust. She can’t blame them; it’s a face they only vaguely recognize, maybe having seen her before in previous years on out-trips to the senior camp, like some smudge of a face in a nightmare. They only know that her presence is a disruption.

Quinn asks it first, tight and angry. “Where’s Beth?”

They should have come up with a story by now. Maybe they did, actually – Sarah skipped the staff meeting this morning, not wanting to get out of bed at the first bugle. She can only imagine what they’d say: Beth went home sick, Beth had a personal emergency, Beth needed to leave camp for something.

“She has a bad case of the flu,” Rachel says from the other end of the table, looking only to the girls and avoiding Sarah completely. “She’s in the hospital for dehydration. She’ll be back when she’s feeling better.”

It satisfies the full length of the table, Rachel’s girls taking it in as well and Quinn softening beside Sarah as the news hits her. Sarah can see them all trying to process an illness and the sympathy it births; some of them knew Beth better than she does, and she wishes she could promise Beth will be okay the way the flu seems to assure.

Rachel must have made it to the staff meeting, then. Sarah doesn’t know why that bothers her. Maybe that it seems like she went to bed last night and decided she was done grieving, just flicking it off to get back to her regular ice queen duties. Maybe that anything she had with Sarah seems to have been shut out with it. It’s a coping mechanism, clearly, but then Rachel doesn’t appear to be affected by it at all, eating her toast with calm fingers.

“We’ll make Beth cards after the trip,” Madeleine decides.

Quinn presses her elbow into Sarah’s side. “You going to make one too?”

What could Sarah say in it? Glad you survived? Sorry for stopping what you were so desperate to do you tried it at a camp full of kids? She can’t even picture drawing some cheerful crayon bullshit on the front without chewing through her cheek. She’d probably just draw the lake and hate herself.

The girls are looking at her expectantly, like the validity of the idea rests on her confirmation.

“Of course,” she says, biting out a smile. “I think Beth would really like that.”

She’ll come back to her sadness smothered out of her once again, to a lie perpetuated by a cabin full of cards that hold no real value, faced with the same people who couldn’t keep her from trying to escape in the first place. She’ll go through the same exact motions. She’ll swim in the same lake. Sarah can’t understand how a mother could force that on her daughter – could send her back to the place that almost killed her, knowing nothing’s changed but a new failure tucked under her belt.

That’s the worst way to love someone. That’s the worst way to try to get them to stay.

Sarah tears a hole through the wet center of her waffle, everything in her tightened. Six more weeks. And they’re supposed to be able to survive it.

 

* * *

 

 

Sarah’s probably the least qualified person to be running fishing, but Tony seems confident enough, trusting Sarah with the Styrofoam container of worms while he hands out fishing rods.

They have ten kids for the next two hours, most of the campers who stayed behind opting for the more exciting wilderness games or whatever arts and crafts bullshit Alison’s apparently leading with Gracie. (Rachel must be on the out-trip this week; Sarah didn’t see her after lunch, but she can’t think where she’d be at camp. Certainly not with Paul in the woods.)

“And then when you’re comfortable casting, you’re gonna get a worm from Sarah and find yourself a spot by the water,” Tony’s saying, grinning at Sarah like he knows what he’s done.

The kids, mostly boys and two girls from Beth’s group, turn to Sarah now, holding their rods with the hooks tucked onto the fishing line. There’s a general air of cockiness from the boys that Sarah wants to stamp out and an awe from the girls and she realizes she’s definitely going to have to touch worms to prove that a girl _can_ touch worms without gagging like she’d love to do.

Just the thought that the worms are wriggling around under the Styrofoam has her queasy. She’s hugging it, but it’s mostly to prevent herself from chucking it into the water.

“You okay with that, Sarah?” Tony asks.

He has that guy smirk, the one that waits for her to seek help and need him as a savior. She wonders if guys know they do it or if it’s just built into them, the assumption that women will always come to them, that they’ll always need to play the hero. Even the good guys. Even her brother, sometimes.

She clutches the container tighter. “I love worms. No problem.”

It’s worth it for the smile she gets from one of the girls, and then Tony has the kids spaced out along the edge of the water to practice their casting without hooking anyone.

They’re at a part of the waterfront Sarah hasn’t seen before in the daylight, full of brush and weeds and a small strip of sand that trees somehow still grow their way through. There’s a half-sunken dock a little ways up the lake, she knows. Paul took her there once. She’d thought it would be a great place to skinny-dip and then he kissed her neck and she’s mostly tried to forget about it.

“What happened to your hand?” Tony asks when the kids are self-sufficient, coming over to sit on one of the tiny camping stools.

Sarah glances down at the flimsy one next to him and decides sitting and possibly falling seems better than standing with the worms for the rest of the afternoon. She eases herself onto it and settles the worms in her lap like a sleeping baby.

“Uh, punched a wall,” she says, frowning at her knuckles. “Accidentally. Almost fell in the shower, so.”

He smiles, tongue between his teeth, and shakes his head. “Sarah Manning, you’re a crappy liar. And I have eyes.”

Obviously anyone spending more than a minute with Paul would put it together, but she’d really hoped people were dumb enough to at least overlook it. She sighs.

“Paul,” she says.

Tony nods, his smile even more amused. “I just wanna know what happened. I’m sure he deserved it.”

“I thought you guys were friends,” Sarah says.

He’s all sprawled out, taking up an impressive amount of space, and Sarah’s _I ride the subway_ anger comes back in a brief wave before she stretches her legs out as well. Her boots are finally dry, still stinking of lake water, still stinking of Beth, but at least they give her the illusion of taking up more space than she really is. That’s why she bought them; she wanted people to hear her footsteps and get out of her way.

“We are,” Tony says. “That’s why I know he deserved it. So what happened? Did he mouth off? Get too handsy?”

She eyes him, still not sure what exactly he knows about last summer besides the fact that she and Paul spent a considerable amount of time together. Guys brag, she knows, so Paul could have told him everything, neither of them caring that he had a girlfriend, or Tony could have picked up on Paul’s wandering hands and the way he always sat with her at campfires and just figured it out himself.

She wishes she could erase it from everyone’s memory. Most of all her own, but there’s a scar on her back that won’t let that happen. There’s Beth’s blood on her bracelet. There’s a ghost now.

“Just pissed me off,” she says, lifting her shoulders.

He doesn’t believe it, but he seems to garner from her expression that the true story isn’t something he wants to hear.

A kid comes running over a second later, hook flying wildly through the air, and Tony has to reprimand him before he can come get a worm. And then Sarah finds herself burying any thoughts of Beth in the damp, squirming soil, pulling out a writhing worm with her bare fingers to the delight of the boy.

“Gross,” he says in approval, observing as Sarah carefully pushes the worm onto his hook.

It continues twisting even after being pierced and she feels sick, unable to look away until the boy slowly walks back to his spot in the sand.

“You okay?” Tony asks. “You’re looking a little pale. I could take over worm duty, if you want.”

She takes in a breath of sharp woodsy air and shuts the Styrofoam lid with a silent apology, willing her blood flow to return to normal as she gives Tony a smile.

“Nope, I’ve got it,” she tells him, straightening her shoulders.

Watching him hook the worms with no remorse would be worse than doing it herself. At least she can tack this on to a long list of awful shit she’s done; her guilt was tailor-made for this sort of thing.

It gets a little easier, enough to smile when the girls come over, enough to ignore the way the worms that don’t get picked curl up deeper in the soil every time she retracts her hand. It’s even fine when someone finally catches a fish – the shorter girl, and it’s a rock bass, Tony says, spiking and thrashing in anger.

Sarah can look at the fish and file the guilt away with the worms, going so far as to volunteer to unhook it when Tony can’t, cutting her hand on the spiked top fin but only holding tighter, palm stinging, working with a lump in her throat to remove the hook from the corner of its mouth.

They put it in a bucket of water. Sarah dips her hand in the lake and watches the ribbons of blood thin out until they disappear. Everyone crowds around the bucket, staring with wide eyes, rods abandoned.

Beth is going to come back to her own small bucket of water, Sarah thinks.

She sits down with the First-Aid kit and bandages her hand and watches the kids watch the fish.

Someone wants to name it. Sarah dumps it back in the lake five minutes later, willing it to be smart enough to swim far away. It gets caught again not long before they’re due to head back, and Sarah takes it off the hook, and this time it cuts her fingers instead.

She’ll come to dinner later with two sets of bandages. All her injuries are on the same damn hand.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s the second time in her life Rachel’s had to ride a school bus, the first being a sixth grade field trip to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra that ended in everyone teasing her for enjoying it so much. She’s fairly certain she didn’t vomit then, but the entire ride to the ropes course after lunch has her convinced it’s an inevitability and she boards the bus to head back to camp absolutely dreading what it will do to her stomach.

She’d sat alone on the ride there, near the front, close enough to Delphine to make it clear they’re ignoring each other in case she decided to say anything. She prepares for the same on the way back, takes the same seat, and then finds herself boxed in by one of Sarah’s girls, two more taking the seat in front of her.

“Someone’s popular,” Delphine says as she slides into the seat across the aisle.

She has a six year-old with her who seems ready to sleep and Rachel’s envious, frowning at her over Madeleine’s head.

Madeleine catches the look and only wiggles in further, pinning Rachel to the window, a terrifying grin on her face that Rachel wishes she could wipe off with peroxide. Maybe it would melt the rest of her features as well and Rachel could pretend she’s sitting here without anyone staring at her.

The bus starts up before Rachel can tell her to sit elsewhere. Delphine finally looks away.

It’s the first time Delphine’s spoken to her since Thursday night, and she might not be covered in blood anymore but Rachel swears she can still see it on her; can see her clean hands trembling, wearing sleeves of Beth that don’t wash off.

Flat, dusty fields pass by out the window, and Rachel does her best to focus on this. It’s only an hour back to camp. She can survive it.

“How do you like your bracelet?” Madeleine asks a minute later, tapping Rachel’s wrist.

It was a mistake, bringing her girls out for quiet hour yesterday. Rachel knows this now. She should have shut them inside, drawn the curtains, forced them to nap or read or sit impeccably still in the dark.

“It’s a good bracelet,” Rachel says. It burns her skin.

There’s no space between them to move her arm to the seat, aching to distract herself with the feel of the textured grey plastic, but her thighs stick where her shorts don’t cover and it’s enough to at least ground her.

Madeleine runs her fingers along the woven thread, admiring her own work.

Rachel can see echoes of the bracelet in the braids that pull back Madeleine’s dark hair, and they look too delicate to have been Sarah’s doing, too small and careful and deliberate. Rachel resists the urge to touch them. She won’t find Sarah there.

She doesn’t want to find Sarah anywhere.

“We’re making cards for Beth when we get back,” Madeleine says, and Delphine catches Rachel’s eye at this.

Of course they are; of course they’d be young and altruistic and think this is something they can make better with kind words. Rachel can’t imagine what Beth will do with a pile of cards that wish her well from the flu. _Feel better_. It sounds like a command.

(Rachel thought her mother was sick too, when winter first happened in Canada. She didn’t make her a card. She looked the other way.)

One of the girls in the seat ahead of them says she’s going to use glitter, a bodiless voice that has Rachel digging her fingers into the ridged metal of the window frame. Glitter stains. Glitter doesn’t wash out. Delphine’s arms could have been coated in red glitter.

“Sarah’s making one too,” Madeleine says. She looks at Rachel like it’s a challenge.

Rachel averts her eyes.

“I’m sure she is,” she says.

She doesn’t want to have to think about Sarah; Sarah trying to find condolences, Sarah with glitter on her hands, Sarah playing along that this is just some illness the hospital can make better. That cards can make better. Than can be made better.

It ends, yes.

It ends in a bathtub.

It ends in people who should have known better _losing_ themselves in the aftermath, falling apart like Sarah and not knowing how to make it through.

“You should make one,” Madeleine says. “Bring your guys to our cabin before dinner. We have a whole bin of art supplies.”

Rachel swallows; studies her nails. There’s another chip.

“That’s very kind,” she says. “But I think we can manage on our own.”

Madeleine tilts her head, a very adult look passing over her face. “Are you sure? You know my mom says this sort of thing helps. She’s a school counselor.”

 _What do you know about it_? Rachel thinks of asking, before realizing what she means: that this will help _Beth_ , not help the people who were left here in her wake. They aren’t talking about grief. This is just about the flu, and Rachel tries to steady her heart.

(She’d gone to a counselor for a short while, following the loss of her mother. She’d sat in a primary-colored room and played with dolls and refused to talk.)

(They’d sent her father home with a list of things to _bring up_. He never did.)

She wonders if they’ll bring in grief counselors or someone to talk to for the people who were involved. There was someone who drowned on a vacation when she was in high school, a boy a few grades above her, and an entire room was set up for anyone who needed to talk. Everyone mourned so openly. The school flag remained at half-mast for months. And then one day they moved on, and Rachel wondered if it had happened at all.

Delphine has the child sleeping against her now, small lips pursed in a cherubic bow. Delphine strokes her hair.

The six and seven year-olds go home tomorrow, their two weeks up and another group coming Monday morning. Rachel wonders if Delphine misses them when they go; if they feel like her own children, especially now that they were here through Beth. It will be another group of little children that see Beth’s return. None of this feels right.

She wants to ask Delphine about the aftermath. She wants to ask about the cleanup, about scrubbing her hands and heading back to bed. If she slept at all. If Beth’s shallow breathing rang in her ears.

Her stomach coils and uncoils, the nausea a constant like the time her father forced her on a sailboat for some outing with a boss of his. She’d been told to watch the horizon; the bus only passes fields and scatterings of trees, and she thinks of the spray of the lake and the way the boss touched her shoulders.

She’d known her job was to look pretty. Her father had no wife to bring, and she was fourteen and understood how to let lipstick wear her. It wasn’t the boat that had her nauseous.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Madeleine asks her.

It seems to be every child’s curiosity and Rachel tries to think back to being eleven, to training bras and quitting ballet, and wonders if these things ever interested her. Surely she had crushes at that age. Surely there was more than just _I want to be her_.

She turns so she can look at Madeleine’s face, fixed on her dark lashes. “No,” she says. “I’m not interested in relationships.”

She can see Delphine watching her, passive, just as motionless as the sleeping child. Madeleine’s face shifts in surprise. The bus jerks over a pothole.

“Don’t you want to get married?” Madeleine asks.

The girls in the seat in front pop their heads up at this, arms draped over the back of the seat as they join the conversation. Interrogation. Their eyes feel like a hot lamp held to Rachel’s face.

“I want a successful career and a personal driver,” she says with a lift of her shoulders.

It isn’t apologetic. It sounds like her mother. She wonders, for the hundredth time, how her mother ended up with a husband and a child instead. The girls all look at her with awe.

“What do you want to be?” one of the girls asks.

Rachel pretends to consider it for a moment, even bringing a finger to her chin. “Something powerful.”

“That sounds achievable, for you,” Delphine says, and the girls turn at her voice.

There’s a murmur of agreement. Rachel wonders if they equate _powerful_ with _bitch_ and then realizes she doesn’t care; they can see her as whatever they like, as long as they recognize that there’s power in her ability to choose.

She’ll have a penthouse apartment someday, dark floors to pace across in heels. The city will be hers to observe and she’ll make phone calls that change lives and she won’t care at all, she’ll be so poised, she’ll be so much bigger than her mother could have ever hoped. She’ll never speak to her father again. She’ll exist only in the fear she sparks in other people.

The girls cling to her answer for another moment before moving on, the two sitting back down in their seat and Madeleine bringing out a half-finished bracelet she tapes to her leg to continue. The colors are soft: peach and yellow and mint, and Rachel wonders who it’s for. It feels like such a stark contrast to the image Rachel’s just drawn up in her head. It certainly isn’t something she could ever tie around her wrist.

But then she didn’t think she’d wear Sarah’s bruise until Sarah was tying it on her, last night at the campfire, her fingers fumbling and smoke in her hair.

It’s _embarrassing_. Rachel should have never let her get so close.

Madeleine leans into her slightly as if she can feel her tensing up, bracing herself against Rachel’s arm. Her fingers work carefully. Quickly. It’d be like watching Sarah braid if it felt at all like the whole thing could come undone at any second, and Rachel wonders how Sarah manages to carry that through everything she does in life.

She finds herself digging in her backpack for her water bottle a second later, needing something to quell her nausea.

She’d owned less than a third of the items on the mailed out packing list, her father coming home one day with most of them, filling the living room with bags. A metal water bottle with its own hook. A heavy flashlight. A waterproof watch. Bug spray. Twin-size sheets. Even the backpack that sits at her feet now, full of pockets and adjustable straps. Everything has his touch on it. Everything feels like someone else’s.

“I can teach you, you know,” Madeleine says, as Rachel finds herself staring once again at the bracelet. “It’s not that hard.”

“Sarah can’t manage it,” Rachel says, thinking of what Sarah said yesterday while braiding, the table full of embroidery thread.

A smile creeps across Madeleine’s face. “Well, Sarah has a specific skill set. That’s not her fault.”

She speaks of her like a fond daughter; niece, maybe. It’s that teasing affection Rachel always saw in other families, and it’s here with a child who has no obligation to be this kind. Rachel’s not even sure her own campers will remember her name once the summer’s over.

“I’d… I wouldn’t mind learning,” Rachel says with her eyes fixed on the bracelet. “When we have some time.”

Madeleine stops weaving for a second to reach into her bag and she pulls out a rainbow handful of skeins, laying them flat across her knee.

“We have time now,” she says. “Pick three colors. This one’s an easy one.”

Rachel eyes the spread, momentarily thinking of colors with a certain person in mind, before selecting brown and two shades of green. “Like the forest,” she says.

Madeleine smiles approvingly, grabbing a pair of scissors and a roll of tape from the depths of her backpack and readying herself to set Rachel up with some bracelet making. Rachel only watches, regret instantaneous, smiling when Madeleine smiles, ignoring Delphine’s chuckles as Madeleine launches into the tutorial.

At the very least Rachel will have a reminder of the summer that isn’t distress. And, she finds, the end taped to her thigh, it’s oddly relieving to have something to occupy her hands.

She’s made half a bracelet by the time they get back to camp. Madeleine promises to teach her a dozen more.

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel quite purposely sits as far away as she can get from Sarah’s group at movie night, abandoning her own girls and even accidentally choosing a spot at the side near Alison. Madeleine finds her still.

She’s quiet, at least, settling onto the bench with more bracelet-making supplies, almost ignoring Rachel completely as if this is just coincidence. Sarah doesn’t seem to have noticed, alone on another bench at the back of the room. Rachel takes this as a consolation. She tries to pretend Sarah’s shell-shocked appearance doesn’t stir anything in her.

_Pull yourself together. It’s over._

“Have you seen this before?” Madeleine asks as the movie starts.

She still isn’t facing Rachel, turned enough that Rachel can only see her cheek and the corner of her mouth, but her expression seems friendly enough. Rachel tries to shake the thought that Madeleine’s here on some agenda. Maybe, Rachel thinks, she’s here because she actually enjoys the company.

But that would be ridiculous – Rachel doesn’t entertain the idea for more than a second, and then confirms that yes, she’s seen this movie before, when people still had VHS tapes. Jumanji. She owned it, she’s pretty sure. She’s seen it a couple times.

She’d been terrified of the spiders; she’d also secretly been terrified that she’d get pulled into a game one day, forcing her parents to forget about her. She was never sure it would take them very long.

Madeleine nudges her and is holding out a selection of skeins, a smaller amount than what she had in her backpack earlier. “Pick four,” she says.

Rachel chooses the four closest to her: yellow, red, orange, and white. It looks like fire in her hand.

Alison glances back at them, disapproval on her face for something – talking, perhaps, and then softens slightly as she sees Madeleine knotting the ends of cut threads together to start a bracelet. Yes, Rachel feels like telling her, I’m capable of interacting with children. They don’t all see me as a monster.

Three of them don’t, at least. And she’s not entirely sure she can count Marlow. Still. It’s more than she believed could like her before she got here.

“This is a really cool one,” Madeleine says, dropping her voice to a whisper when she catches Alison looking.

She demonstrates the weaving technique for a few rows, trusting that Rachel can follow along, and then hands it over with a small pat to Rachel’s knee.

Rachel finished the last bracelet at dinner to Evie’s delight and was admittedly a little disappointed to know she’d have nothing to occupy her during the movie so she’s happy to take it, even though she didn’t think Madeleine would continue with this quest. It isn’t as if Rachel has anything to give her in return.

She looks over to Sarah again, just to confirm that Madeleine isn’t over here as some sort of spy or part of whatever inane plan Sarah could have come up with. Rachel’s not an idiot; she’s aware Sarah’s struggling to figure out why Rachel’s suddenly distant.

Sarah’s distracted by the counselor who’s here to replace Beth, the conservative one from the senior camp who has already made friends with a few of Beth’s girls. Sarah’s glaring. Rachel understands, but it isn’t this poor girl’s fault. They had no other option. Alison couldn’t play both parts forever.

Beth will be back soon, anyway. Sarah seemed so convinced of that.

“Her parents’ll drag her back here the second she’s stitched up,” Sarah had said at the campfire, hot and angry at Rachel’s ear. “IV and everything.”

Rachel doesn’t doubt it; Beth seems too hard to have parents that did anything but raise her within a strict set of expectations, more concepts of consequences than anything. Rachel imagines them tall. Beth isn’t, but they feel tall. Rigid. Faces set in perpetual disappointment.

It’s a wonder she has a boyfriend, but then maybe that’s part of her armor.

Rachel thought that could help, once. That if she had friends, a boy to take her out in the evenings, her father would stop seeing her as some unfinished project left to collect dust. She dated two boys. Neither made her feel anything more than indifference.

“You messed up there,” Madeleine whispers, pointing to the bracelet.

One of the colors is in the wrong place, hiding under the red. Madeleine reaches across Rachel’s lap to fix it, undoing the last two rows, seemingly oblivious to Rachel’s stiff posture at someone now contaminating her space. Rachel hates how children just _assume_ like this – that they’re wanted, that they’re harmless, that they aren’t such wild things of destruction.

Madeleine pulls back and Rachel shifts a few inches down the bench.

Madeleine doesn’t talk after that, and Rachel focuses on the bracelet instead of the movie, grateful for once to not get absorbed into the storyline. It isn’t even particularly good. But the children enjoy it, more so when popcorn is passed around at a brief intermission, leaving kernels all over the floor. Rachel’s shoes crunch as they leave later and she makes sure none of her kids attempt to bring any back to the cabins, thinking of Sarah’s position on ants.

She doesn’t watch Sarah the entire walk back.

She doesn’t see how Sarah plays with her bloody bracelet, hands shaking.

She doesn’t see the stumble that has Sarah glancing behind her, at Rachel, desperately holding onto the eye contact. Rachel breaks it first.

She has to break everything first. It’s the only way.

 _You wouldn’t understand_ , she thinks.

Sarah doesn’t look back a second time.

 

* * *

 

 

Two days. Sarah doesn’t hear from Rachel for two days. And then it’s Monday night at the campfire, and Rachel comes up behind her, fingers ghosting through Sarah’s hair.

It sends shivers down her spine.

“Here,” Rachel says.

She drops something into Sarah’s lap: a bracelet the color of the fire.

“I can’t tie it on myself,” Sarah says, too surprised to say anything else, but Rachel’s already leaving.

Sarah has to get Raya to tie it on for her, who’s perceptive enough not to ask about any of it. (Sarah doesn’t have answers anyway. She has two days of silence and odd glances. She has questions of her own.)

She keeps her hand on the bracelet for the entire half hour it takes her girls to make and devour a series of smores, everything sticky and charred. It doesn’t burn the way she expects it to. It isn’t poison, and she wonders if Rachel thought of her while making it; if there are any answers woven into the zigzagged thread.

_This is how I deal with grief, Sarah._

_You offended me the last time we talked._

_Beth’s fine; you don’t need me anymore._

But her fingers find nothing – just the texture of the pattern, no blood, no Beth, no secrets.

“It’s pretty,” Quinn says, dropping down beside her on the log.

She has a roasted marshmallow between her fingers, half melted and increasingly messy as she squishes and squishes it.

Sarah decides to ignore it. “Rachel made it for me.”

Quinn crinkles her nose, exactly Sarah’s reaction to the marshmallow, and down the log Madeleine makes some noise of confirmation.

“I’ve been teaching her,” Madeleine says.

Quinn laughs. Sarah wants to as well, but somewhere across the fire Rachel’s probably watching and she doesn’t know if it would upset her or fuel her. She hates it, not knowing where she stands. She hates having known for a little bit even more.

If she could just _talk_ to her… But then she’s not sure what she’d say, or what she wants to hear from Rachel either. If it was just the silence Sarah could compartmentalize it. But now there’s a bracelet around her wrist and she has no idea how to even begin to figure it out.

She’d tried to talk to Delphine about it. Sort of.

She’d brought up a vague _do you ever just… lose your place in a person_ but then Delphine asked if she meant a book, chuckling, and the smile felt too strange after everything, and Sarah decided it was best just to drop it. She could have worded it better, sure. But then Delphine might have remembered when Sarah brought up the crush, if it’s possible to go back before Beth, and Sarah doesn’t want to be the one to drag everyone back there. She can barely think about it herself without feeling the lake in her boots.

It was strange relaying it to Mrs. S – Sarah called after the director did, letting someone else deal with the shock, and then just handed it over in clipped fragments.

_She was in the lake. She cut her wrists. I pulled her out. Delphine called the ambulance._

Neither of them cried over the phone but Felix said S cried later, when she thought he was asleep, like some mournful elephant in her room. He sounded small despite the forced cheer. Sarah never wanted to hear him that way. _You saved a girl’s life_ , he said. She reminded him she wrecked it a year before so it was only fair.

She wanted to tell him about Rachel, but she wasn’t sure how to put any of it into words besides a soft _she stayed up all night with me_ that still wouldn’t explain it at all.

She calls him again after the campfire, tucked into the trees with a cigarette, just to tell _someone_ about the bracelet. He doesn’t quite get it and she doesn’t expect him to. But he listens, hearing her exhale and maybe knowing that she’s smoking and loving her anyway. He seems to miss her more this year than last. She doesn’t want to guess why.

“Are you going to make _me_ a bracelet?” he asks.

“You don’t want what I can make,” she promises him.

He laughs. Agrees. She clings to the sound.

Four years ago at Christmas she gave him some shitty clay piece she’d made at school; an owl or something, hollowed out and deformed from where she tried to give it eyes. He loved it then. He was nine and already so much better than her at most things, but he treasured it. She’s pretty sure it’s still on his bookshelf.

She gets him birthday cards with monsters on them, a sort of throwback to what that clay thing became. Every year. Even though they’re mostly for little kids, even though they sparkle or have giant googly eyes, he still acts touched.

“I miss you, Fe,” she says rough into the phone.

“Miss you too,” he says. “You giant sap.”

She’ll never tell him how it felt to pull Beth from the lake. She doesn’t want him to know that sort of corpse-like heaviness is possible, to hold or to be. She hopes he grows up without ever finding out.

“So Rachel’s…” he starts, leaving it there for her to finish.

She inhales sharp on the cigarette. It scratches. “A pain in my arse.”

“Yeah, and you care about that bracelet, so spill.”

So Rachel’s someone who explained a book to her, and the next morning acted like she didn’t exist. So Rachel makes her feel nauseous every time she looks at her. So Rachel was the one to find her in the forest, covered in Beth’s blood.

“It’s complicated,” she says.

She can _hear_ him roll his eyes. But he leaves it at that, dutifully dragging the conversation elsewhere, and lets her go to bed without having to explain. He’ll ask again later, she’s sure. If it interests him he can’t leave it alone. She’ll probably come home to find a series of paintings of what he imagines Rachel to be stacked up in the basement, all hearts and fangs.

She dreams of just that: Rachel and hearts and fangs. Devouring. Blood down her chin. It doesn’t scare her the way it should.

There are two bracelets on her wrist now, two scabbed cuts on that hand, greenish-purple bruises across the knuckles. She doesn’t know how to hide any of it in the morning. If she should even want to. She can explain them all away – but then Rachel glances at the bracelet at the staff meeting, and that brief look is all she gives her.

Sarah starts to catalogue these Rachel moments in terms of things she’d tell Felix if she could tell him anything, needing the idea of him to anchor her to not demanding Rachel acknowledge her.

_She looks at me across the soccer field. Maybe._

_She ignores me completely at swimming even though Madeleine talks to her._

It’s another day of Sarah trying to hold eye contact that Rachel refuses to give, so much like what followed the first Thursday night and somehow even worse, the way Rachel floats above it without a scratch, and it’s a desperation that has Sarah catching Rachel outside of the cabins before dinner.

Their kids are piling out around them and Sarah hesitates, her hand on Rachel’s arm.

“Yes?” Rachel says. It’s a blade.

Sarah sees her with fangs. Devouring. Hearts. Devouring. She pulls on the stupid bracelet.

“Uh, just wanted to say thanks,” she says, lifting up her wrist.

Rachel nods.

And then she has all of her kids and she goes, winding down the path into the thick of trees while Sarah stands dumbly at the base of the porch stairs.

Delphine would probably have something to say about this, or Cosima, who’d most likely think it’s the universe righting itself. Sarah half considers talking to them at dinner before remembering any one of them could mention Beth and it’s the last thing she wants to have to talk about. They could _ask_. Sarah could have to tell them. Delphine’s been safe enough in that she was there, but Cosima…

It’s easiest to eat her soggy meatloaf and stare at the block of ice that’s replaced Rachel and pretend this is some dream version of her summer that’s trying its best to be a nightmare.

“Everything feels kinda weird,” Naomi says as they find a place in the rec hall for movie night.

Sarah agrees. She can’t tell them why.

Delphine and Cosima have their new batch of tiny kids now, fresh terrified faces clustered like spores around them. Sarah decides it’s best if she doesn’t get to know a single one, thinking of Chloe and her soft blonde hair. They’ll be gone in less than two weeks anyway. Everything goes.

Naomi sits with her brother. Madeleine, surprisingly, heads over to Rachel. Sarah isn’t sure if she’s supposed to see her as a traitor. Quinn sticks by Sarah’s side, slipping her fingers through Sarah’s bracelets as the movie starts.

The only bracelets Quinn wears are ones she’s made herself.

“I killed a spider this morning,” she whispers about halfway through James and The Giant Peach, the spider smiling onscreen.

Sarah says nothing until Quinn looks at her, quietly upset.

“It’s only a movie,” Sarah tells her, giving her a tiny smile until it’s clear it isn’t working. “Let the next one live, then. You’ll get another chance.”

“You sure?” Quinn says.

It’s camp, it’s filled with spiders, but this isn’t what they’re talking about. Sarah wonders how long Quinn’s been this withdrawn. She can’t even recall the last time she heard a cruel remark, to Daniela or otherwise.

“I’m sure,” she says. She wants to say, _I’m sorry_.

She doesn’t even know what happened. She doesn’t even know how to ask.

Quinn pulls her fingers away from Sarah’s bracelets and doesn’t say anything else.

 

* * *

 

 

Sarah calls Felix again once her girls are asleep, updating him on nothing, and then stays at the picnic table even after she’s hung up.

 _Mrs. S says I’m going to summer school next year even if I don’t fail anything_ , he’d told her, still awake playing some video game. _She’s sick of me hanging around the house all day_.

Sarah told him she’d be sick of him too, but she wishes he was here next to her, swatting at the mosquitoes she can’t be arsed to flick off her skin and filling in the silences he always hates to let linger.

She’s lonely. She couldn’t tell him but he probably guessed it, telling her every tiny thing that happened in the past twenty-four hours like she actually cares. The worst part is she does; she misses home with a visceral ache, kneading the inside of her stomach with brass knuckles. She wants to sit at the kitchen table and drink tea and hear S ream her out for the state of her room. She wants to trip over Felix’s bloody backpack.

She wants to see his smile, and sitting here in the dark it feels like that’ll never happen again.

Eight weeks is an eternity. She still can’t figure out why she came back.

A sound on the steps alerts her to someone’s presence, and then from the shadows emerges a pyjama-clad Rachel who drifts over like her feet don’t even touch the ground.

Sarah’s sure she’s dreaming at first with Rachel’s face not puckered up all sour but then Rachel sits down across the table, leaning on her elbows, and Sarah can feel the air bristle from Rachel’s soft breath.

“You’re not sleeping,” Rachel says.

 _You’re not talking to me_ , Sarah wants to say. She shrugs instead.

Rachel rests her cheek on a curled fist, elbow braced against the weathered wood of the table. It’s already leaving lines in the skin. Sarah hopes it scars and neither of them can say they forgot this in the morning.

“Are you still thinking about her?” Rachel asks.

Of course she is. Closing her eyes leads to Beth’s marble skin, slipping through Sarah’s weak hands and down into the dirt, everything slick with blood. No, the lake. It was the lake. It can’t all have been blood.

She’d tell her, but Rachel couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like. Rachel only saw the stain and then disappeared and Sarah can’t see why she’d choose now to be concerned.

She’s had _days_. Sarah can’t even look at her.

“It gets easier,” Rachel says. “It starts to feel less real.”

She reaches out and her fingers brush the bracelet on Sarah’s wrist, ice where they hit skin.

 _Like a dream?_ Sarah wants to ask.

“Almost like you imagined it,” Rachel adds. She speaks to the forest. Her fingers leave Sarah’s wrist.

 _I keep imagining Beth coming back_ , Sarah could say. It’s a lie. She won’t let herself think about it, because Beth returning means Beth _returning_ and Sarah doesn’t know how to confront a ghost. She can’t even chase her away in her dreams. She mostly just looks right through her, and it’s like she doesn’t exist at all.

“I’m not thinking about her,” Sarah says.

Rachel presses her lips together, tight, but accepts the lie.

Sarah wants to ask her where she’s been but she can’t even put the words together. Rachel hasn’t left. Rachel’s been in her peripheral this whole time, silent and unflinching. Sarah could have pierced her with an arrow and she still wouldn’t have said a word.

Why now? she wants to ask. Or maybe she doesn’t. Rachel’s hand darts out again and Sarah finally takes it.

She expects ice but finds heat instead, Rachel’s palm on fire and soft where it attaches itself to Sarah’s. It’s a claw. It isn’t, but Sarah tells herself that.

Rachel doesn’t even look human in the thin veil of moonlight – Sarah can make out teeth where Rachel’s mouth stays open and a strip of jaw that cuts across neck but the rest is liquid, shifting as Sarah tries to look at it, rippling where her eyes linger.

“I’ve been thinking about the rest of the myths,” Rachel says.

Sarah doesn’t want her to say anything.

Rachel asks, “What do you remember?”

It’s like talking to a reflection, Rachel exhaling as Sarah does, their hands tightening together.

“Persephone,” Sarah says. That pomegranate seed.

“The Underworld,” Rachel says, and they’re still holding hands, and Sarah hopes Rachel never saw it as anything other than freedom.

She had no mother to speak of when the teacher explained the story to them. There was a woman she’d easily leave, who would very much feel her absence, but Sarah knew what she’d do if there was a handful of seeds for her to eat. She’d been hit for less; this at least would end in escape.

She was so desperate to leave. She couldn’t stand the way Mrs. S loved her, like there was nothing she could do to stop that.

“My mother wouldn’t read that one to me,” Rachel says after a silence. “I had to read it to myself.”

 _Because she loves you_ , Sarah almost says. There’s a look on Rachel’s face that stops her.

Sarah remembers Medusa too, but she doesn’t want to talk about snakes in the middle of the forest. She can’t think about turning to stone. There was something hopeful about Persephone and she’d like to hold onto that, tight like she squeezes Rachel’s hand and Rachel still doesn’t flinch.

“Why’d you make me the bracelet?” Sarah asks.

Rachel’s fingers curl. “Because your other one is stained with blood.”

“I’m still not taking it off,” Sarah says. She can’t untie the knot. She can’t come at it with any kind of blade.

“I figured,” Rachel says. “But it’s less noticeable now.”

It’s too dark for Sarah to tell but she angles her wrist anyway, staring at the shapes like they’ll show her anything other than blood. She even sees it in her tea now, settling under the teabag. Rachel can’t take that away.

“Did you make Beth a card?” Sarah asks.

There’s a pile somewhere with Alison, covered in glitter. It’s awful. Alison smiled anyway.

“I did,” Rachel says.

“Me too.” Sarah digs her nails into Rachel’s skin but Rachel only leans into it. “Glued on a bunch of sequins, the big ones.”

“Did you write anything?” Rachel asks.

She covered it in sequins, actually. It was heavy to lift. She thought at first the paper wouldn’t hold it but the glue dried and it seemed strong enough to survive.

“I tried to apologize,” she admits. She sounds tired all of a sudden and Rachel catches it.

“I did too,” Rachel says softly. “I didn’t even know her.”

Sarah didn’t either; she slept with her boyfriend and couldn’t even look at her, and now she knows what her pulse feels like and it doesn’t change a thing.

“She’ll be back soon,” Sarah says.

That’ll have to change everything. It’ll have to be different. They can’t let it stay the same.

“Maybe she won’t, maybe her parents will let her go home,” Rachel says, looking hopeful enough for Sarah to want to hurt her. Her nails aren’t sharp enough to do any damage but she pushes harder anyway.

“They won’t.”

“Sarah.”

Rachel’s looking at her with glassy eyes, too round to be her own. Sarah tries to find the sneer in them. Anything to tell her they’re not doing this.

“It feels like the end of the world,” she breathes out.

She lets go of Rachel’s hand.

“Sarah…”

She’s on her feet and Rachel’s hand is still halfway across the picnic table, open with tiny crescents where Sarah’s nails had been. No blood. Sarah wishes there was. _You made me a bracelet, I made you a scar._

“I’m going to bed,” she says. “I don’t even think about her.”

There’s nothing Rachel can do but watch her go, finally taking her hand off the table as Sarah lingers behind the screen door to watch Rachel’s moonlit form waver in the shadows. It’s a mirage. She fell asleep and dreamt it all up to fill some aching hole. She doesn’t watch Rachel with her heart racing or startle when Rachel turns.

She goes to bed and thinks about no one.

There isn’t even a dream to remember.

 

* * *

 

   
  
There’s an accident at soccer, after breakfast when Sarah is tired and stretched out across the bleachers. All the girls are running and then all of them are still and Sarah realizes someone’s on the ground.

“She just fell,” Zohal says when Sarah propels herself onto the field.

Raya’s curled up with a stick in the back of her knee, exhaling soft moans as everyone stares at the blood. The nurse is on the way, someone says. With a stretcher. They’re going to the hospital– she doesn’t need the hospital– she needs stitches– she needs to yank it out– she-

It’s the moaning, it’s the little sounds that bring Sarah to her knees. Raya only looks at her with wet eyes, face pressed against the grass and her dark braids falling all around her like water. She takes Sarah’s hand when it extends. Sarah squeezes.

“You’ll be all right, love,” Sarah promises. “Just breathe through the pain.”

The specialist sends the rest of the kids to run laps around the field and the nurse comes soon after, but for a moment it’s just Sarah and Raya, solemnly maintaining eye contact, holding tight to each other’s hand.

“She’s a brave girl,” the nurse says as they all help Raya onto the wheeled stretcher, Sarah finally letting go as they need to take her away.

“I should go with her,” Sarah says to no one in particular.

She has nine kids with their eyes on her as they run and the specialist tells her this is where she’s supposed to be. _She’ll be fine, this is procedure_. It isn’t even Sarah’s first camper injury – she had a girl split her lip on a bunk bed last summer and that had twice as much tears as this, blood pooling on the cabin floor.  

“We’ll just keep running drills,” the specialist says, as pale as Sarah feels. “Make sure there aren’t any more sticks on the field.”

The two of them take a moment to look out across the grass, pretending they’d be able to see any potential hazards against all this packed, dry mud. Sarah runs her hands through her hair. The specialist lifts his shoulders. Sarah heads back to the bleachers.

She wonders, lying back down, hands on the skin of her stomach where her shirt rides up, if anything about what Beth did was an accident. If there was something held too close to her wrists and that’s what started it, and she was too numb to know what else to do but continue. It’s ridiculous. Sarah drags her nails across her skin. She’d like to believe there wasn’t a plan.

Alison didn’t get a letter. (Paul didn’t either, Sarah’s learned, but she’s not sure he would have.)

She wants to think Beth is the type of person to leave a note.

She wants to think Beth would at least explain why if she meant to do it; the alternative is that she didn’t care enough to tell them, the people who love her, and Sarah doesn’t want to know her like that.

She doesn’t want to know her at all.

She had a choice, of course, to jump in the lake after her. But not really. Anyone who found her would have done the same. The director told S it was heroic and Sarah could only pretend not to hear the tone it put in her foster mother’s voice. It was a reaction, and Sarah wishes, watching the sky, that it hadn’t been her.

A bird cuts through the stretch of blue above her without a single flap of its wings and she wonders what it’s like to coast like that, trusting that it won’t be dropped. (She thinks of Rachel. That stupid bird that tumbled.)

She doesn’t want to think about anything but she shuts her eyes and she sees the blood down Raya’s leg, staining the grass underneath her. Then it’s the stain in the sand. Then it’s the god-awful bracelet, staining her wrist, this constant reminder that she can’t ever leave it behind.

She scrubs her hands raw before lunch. The scabs come off her palm and fingers and the skin underneath is tender, pink and stinging when it touches the condensation on her water bottle.

Rachel doesn’t look at her. Sarah’s not sure last night happened at all.

“Is it finally better?” Madeleine asks, grabbing Sarah’s fingers to look at the healed cuts. “Does it still hurt?”

Today’s lunch is turkey or veggie burgers, plates heaped with sides of carrot sticks and sliced bell peppers. It’s colorful, at least. Sarah’s been trying to arrange her veggies in some kind of line around the burger to make it all a little easier to stomach.

“Barely feel it,” she says, and Madeleine accepts it and sinks back into her seat across the table.

They haven’t been there ten minutes when Raya comes limping in with a popsicle, red drips down the side of her hand. Madeleine hops up to go get her lunch for her and the rest of the girls start making a fuss, _sit by me, Raya, did you get any stitches_ as Raya continues to let the popsicle melt.

“Just some little strips of this tape stuff,” Raya says, as Zohal helps her get her knee up over the bench. “And some gauze over that. It doesn’t hurt too bad.”

They’re all glancing under the table, trying to see the gauze taped to her skin. Sarah catches her eye and Raya smiles, giving her a slight nod, before continuing to answer the questions everyone throws at her.

It’s enough of a fuss for Rachel to look over, Sarah notes. Just a quick glance, taking it in, quickly busying herself with her carrot sticks.

Not a bloody word all morning after whatever that was last night. Sarah didn’t really expect anything, figuring this is who Rachel’s deciding to be in the daylight, but if she was so concerned with Sarah’s sleep surely she’d at least check in at some point to see if last night was any better.

 _I didn’t think about Beth_ , she wants to tell her.

But Rachel’s talking to one of her girls now, bags under her eyes, and Sarah continues to press the sore skin of her palm into her water bottle to feel that sting. It’s better than feeling nothing. It’s better than feeling a weight in her arms long after she put it down.

“Are you ever gonna swim with us?” Quinn asks, sitting on the other side of Sarah away from the rest of the kids.

She’s been reserved; Sarah keeps meaning to find a moment to ask why, but every time she thinks she’s found one someone interrupts or Quinn disappears. It’s been peaceful, at least, without Quinn’s constant antagonizing. Sarah kind of hates it.

“Maybe on the last day,” Sarah says. She bites into a carrot stick. “Or if it gets hot enough.”

Quinn looks like she might roll her eyes but just lets it go, choosing instead to squish the bun of her burger into something disturbingly flat.

“I don’t want to swim anymore either. I touched a weed with my foot yesterday,” she says.

Sarah chuckles. “Sure it wasn’t a fish? We pulled some pretty creepy ones out of the lake on Saturday.”

It finally elicits a reaction from Quinn, who crinkles her nose and looks at Sarah with a disgust she’d missed.

“Why would you even tell me that?” she asks, horrified.

Sarah can’t stop the laugh from bubbling out and it puts a smile on Madeleine’s face as she returns with Raya’s tray. _Nice to see you happy_ , her expression says. Sarah’s fairly certain she’s seen it on Mrs. S before.

“Well I mean, the boys don’t seem to mind swimming with all the fish,” Sarah says with a shrug, finishing her carrot stick. “But if it’s too much for you…”

Quinn’s lips pull into something close to a snarl before she just sighs. “Yeah, okay. I got it. But if Paul can swim then you can too.”

Sarah grimaces. There isn’t anything she can say to counter that and she fills her mouth with a slice of bell pepper to get out of replying. It isn’t like she can tell Quinn she’d rather not have to remember the last time she was in the water, her arms around a girl who’s now out with the “flu”. 

Quinn raises an eyebrow, smile tugging the corner of her mouth.

“Fine,” Sarah bites out.

“Free swim this afternoon,” Quinn says. “Hope your foot doesn’t touch a fish.”

Sarah begins to clear her burger bun of sesame seeds, brushing the loose ones onto her plate with the backs of her fingers. “Long as you know we’re chatting during quiet hour.”

Quinn seems to consider replying with something combative but settles on removing the sesame seeds from her flattened bun as well, eyes on Sarah’s fingers, doing her best to do exactly the same.

 

* * *

 

 

The lake is cold; Sarah feels it before she’s even in, a chill creeping off the surface and grabbing ankles that wait in the sand.

It’s another hot day so it should be nice, some kind of refreshing, but staring out across the choppy greyish-blue all Sarah can think of is Beth. The almost-grave. How her hair looked falling down her pale skin and what the blood did to the water.

Of course the lake now is full of kids, screaming and laughing and trying to drown each other with smiles on their face, breaking the shimmer of the surface with their thrashes. Sarah tries to focus on their rainbow of colors against the water and their movements that so efficiently contrast the calmness of the lake that night before she broke it. Ankle deep, she stares at the glint of the sun. Lets the cold bite her. It’s the least she can do.

(Part of her, secretly, expects Rachel to come over from where she’s sitting off in the sand to stop her from continuing. _You don’t have to do this to yourself_ , Rachel would say. Sarah would let her take her back. Rachel’s not even looking at her.)

“Come _on_ ,” Quinn says, standing up to her waist with a hot pink noodle, rolling her eyes like she expected this.

 _I’m tired_ , Sarah feels like saying. _I think I’m gonna sleep in the sand instead_.

She sees Tony digging a hole with two of his boys close enough to her stuff to seem reasonable and at the very least it would put another physical barrier between her and Paul, who’s on a noodle raft with half a dozen kids out by the floating dock. She can’t imagine he’d say anything to her at this point but it’s also what he _should_ be doing, to not arouse suspicion, and she’s so frustrated by the whole situation that she’d much rather sit it out. Dig holes with Tony and pretend it’s not happening.

Quinn comes stomping back with a splash and grabs Sarah’s arm, fingers wet and cold, pulling her out into the water. Sarah lets her. They’re closer now, or something, after talking, Sarah using a few of her orientation training skills before just pulling out chocolate, and Sarah’s supposed to be a role model.

“The bottom’s squishy,” she says. She’d forgotten. Last time she was in here she was wearing her boots.

Quinn pauses and glances down, her grip still fearfully tight on Sarah’s forearm.

“Yeah, it gets sandy in a little bit,” she says. “Then it’s all weeds.”

They’re out deep enough for Sarah’s ribs to be bitten by the sharp cold of the water, everything in her constricting as they move. Her usual method is to take a few steps and then wait a painfully long time, telling herself she’s getting used to it, before plunging forward to wait again. She doesn’t have a choice now. She didn’t have a choice with Beth. (She can’t even remember feeling it with Beth – not until later, when it was like she couldn’t get warm.)

Quinn lets go of her noodle for a second to snag a second noodle, a blue one, for Sarah, passing it back before grabbing her own that was doing its best to float away.

“We make these into thrones at my pool at home, me and my neighbor,” Quinn says. “She’s fourteen.”

Sarah smiles even though Quinn isn’t looking at her. “Is she your friend?”

“Yeah,” Quinn says, stopping as the water hits her shoulders. “I think so. I mean, she does my makeup and stuff and we talk about things. She has a boyfriend.”

 _That’s a little young_ , Sarah goes to say, but thinks of herself at fourteen and bites her tongue.

Quinn seems ready to drop it anyway, moving the noodle underneath her so she can sit on it. Sarah does the same. Quinn’s staring off at where the rest of their group has come together, minus Raya, who’s on shore with a book, pushing each other off an inner tube. Sarah hadn’t even noticed; Quinn’s expression hardens and it’s clear she doesn’t want to join them.

“You can swim with Paul, you know,” Quinn says with a frown.

He isn’t even in the water right now, he’s stretched out on the floating dock with a lifeguard, but Sarah isn’t going to point that out. “I’d rather swim with you,” she says.

Quinn makes the same face she did when Sarah pulled her outside during quiet hour, making good on her threat to chat. _Nothing’s up_ , Quinn had said, rolling her eyes. _I’m just sick of everyone here_.

“That’s bull, but okay,” Quinn replies.

The noodle has her floating a little higher in the water than Sarah, her shoulders visible over the surface, Sarah swallowed up to her neck.  For a second she thinks of science class and buoyancy and decides she spends too much damn time with Cosima. 

“You know,” Sarah says, glancing over at Paul, “boys sometimes… They get it in their head that they deserve people because they want them. It’s one of their many flaws.”

Quinn’s hair is struggling to stay wild despite the water pulling it down, curling out in a crown around her face that makes her look, in the sun, so much like a child. Sarah notices for the first time that she has faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, nearly the same color as her tan skin.

“Why?” Quinn says.

Sarah doesn’t know if she’s asking why they do that or why she’s telling her. She can’t answer the second.

“Well they just- I guess being male comes with a sense of entitlement. Deserving things,” she says. Every time she bobs with the flow of the lake her chin dips underwater. It feels like the threat of drowning.

“Girls don’t,” Quinn says. She’s frowning, and Sarah wonders if she should be saying this at all.

“No,” she says. “Girls don’t ever feel like they deserve things.”

Quinn’s silent after that, contemplative, the two of them bobbing in unison as the waves tug them outwards. They’ve somehow managed to drift away from nearly everyone else. Sarah doesn’t mind it at all. She doesn’t even fully mind the weeds that stroke her feet.

“Did Paul?” Quinn asks after a while.

Sarah had almost forgotten what she’d said, and it takes her a second. “Yeah,” she answers.

Quinn looks at her for the first time like she understands her, eyes threaded gold in the sun. And then she plunges off her noodle and disappears underwater so quickly Sarah only really registers a splash and then an absence and she’s alone until Quinn pops up, gasping, a few feet away. She doesn’t look back.

Sarah pulls a chunk of foam out of the end of her noodle and drops the unnatural blue into the water. She’s the cause of everything toxic in this lake. Maybe she’ll grow superpowers; become some sort of villain. 

Later, as they’re toweling off, Quinn tells her she looks a little sick. Everyone shifts away from her.

“Maybe it’s the sunburn,” Madeleine says, offers, and Sarah’s cheeks are definitely hot and tight.

“I’m growing gills,” she jokes. They blink at her. “I’m fine, guys. Just not an aquatic creature. Maybe spent a little too long in the water.”

It’s enough for them to move a little closer, grabbing their stuff so they can head to the changing rooms. Everyone in the sand is packing up, towels wrapped around them, slowly moving towards the path. Sarah pretends she doesn’t look for Rachel and it almost doesn’t sting when she catches Rachel turning away.

Maybe they should have talked about Medusa last night. They could be pretending this is for a reason.

She almost wishes Quinn would see who she’s looking at and make a rude comment so she could pretend she didn’t agree, at the very least getting to enjoy hearing it said out loud. But Quinn’s making an effort, she’d admitted earlier, to not being so awful, and Sarah wants to support that.

 _I don’t want them all to hate me_ , Quinn had said.

But there’d been a sort of desperation to it as well, like she was also saying she doesn’t know how not to, filling her mouth with chocolate before Sarah could ask anything else.

Sarah of all people should understand that self-induced isolation; turning to stone to stop them from seeing how much you want to connect, antagonizing in the hopes that they’ll get that it’s the only way you know how to reach out. It’s like watching her childhood play out in front of her in a much nicer setting.

She decides to risk it and pulls Quinn into her side as they walk, regretting not hugging her earlier despite Quinn quite effectively freezing her out after that slight reveal.

Quinn crinkles her nose but accepts the arm around her.

“So I’d say we survived that experience,” Sarah says, trying to ignore the coldness of Quinn’s damp skin. “What do you think, better than the boys?”

Quinn glances up, having been watching her feet, and the blank expression disappears behind a smile. “Obviously. Paul like, wasn’t even really in the water. We totally won that.”

It’s forced from the both of them and Sarah would still like to know more about why that is on Quinn’s end. But it feels, for a moment, as they bump along together, like something they could almost believe. And Sarah decides to let that be enough.

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel sits between Sahar and Evie at dinner, the two girls equally interested in her newly acquired skill of bracelet making. They’d worn her down enough during quiet hour to agree to teach them, and then when that capsized to agree to make them each a bracelet with colors of their choosing.

“The nice bracelet,” Evie had said, pointing at the complicated pattern Rachel has only half mastered without Madeleine’s help.

Of course they’d want the harder one; double waves, Madeleine had called it, an almost floral design, a series of knots in a pattern Rachel continues to forget. It looks impossible. Of course they’d want to wear that on their skin.

So she’s weaving in between bites of lasagna, Evie’s stub of a bracelet taped to the sticky table. And the girls watch her from either side so attentively they barely eat at all.

(She’s being awful, in secret, doing Evie’s first. Evie certainly asked louder but Rachel mainly chose her as a practice run, not wanting to give the worst one to her favorite child. As long as she doesn’t think about it she can tell herself it isn’t terrible.)

“My sister can do those,” Clementine says with her fork in the air, only now noticing the bracelet.

“Really,” Rachel says. And then for her own amusement,” What’s her name?”

She waits to hear Apple or Cinnamon, disappointed by the “Penelope” that comes out.

“But we mostly call her Nelly,” Clementine says. “Like the rapper.”

Sahar finally tears her eyes away from the bracelet, fixing Clementine with an interested stare. “How old is she?”

A thread slips between Rachel’s fingers and she bites back an expletive as the knot undoes itself.

“Fifteen. She’s in the senior camp,” Clementine says, fork coming dangerously close to Isabella C.’s face as she twirls it.

“That’s where my brother is!” Julisa says from down the table, sitting close enough to Sarah’s vicinity that Rachel can’t look over, and instead busies herself with fixing the mistake she made with the bracelet.

Sarah’s been watching her all day, outright staring at certain points; Rachel has done her best to keep her gaze elsewhere but it’s proving to be harder than expected. (The Madeleine situation, for example. Every time the girl approaches Rachel just _knows_ Sarah’s watching, stewing, possibly, and can’t help the urge to look around. It’s aggravating.)

Her thumb slips this time and she groans under her breath as the thread unravels to the last knot.

It’s pain, she recognizes, that has her hands continuously letting go, strained from all the intricate knotting and braiding. To continue to do this at the rate she desires requires muscle she doesn’t possess and yet she can’t stop, needing to keep her hands busy to stop herself from reaching for… anything.

Hair. Hands.

She hates that she can still feel Sarah’s grip from last night at the picnic table.

Persephone, she’d said. As if Rachel didn’t understand what that meant. (She was always so angry at Demeter. Mothers don’t get to keep their daughters – she should have known. She shouldn’t have tried so hard to cage her.)

“So everyone has to go tonight,” Sahar says while the other girls talk about siblings, handing it over as a question.

“It’ll be fun,” Rachel promises. Another knot slips out.

A ghost walk. She’d laughed at first, by herself at the staff meeting, knowing and still surprised that Sarah wouldn’t show up. A long walk through the woods at sunset, breaking for trail mix and ghost stories. It’s a good way to tire them out, at least.

It’s a camp-wide event therefore stories have to be tame enough as to not traumatize the youngest campers, but Rachel still clocks the apprehension on Sahar’s face. _But you can do anything, Sahar_ , she wants to say, thinking of watching her run or the way she shimmied to the top of a knotted rope on Saturday. Surely this shouldn’t frighten her.

Sahar chews on her lip, something that would annoy Rachel if it was Evie. The action flutters something in Rachel’s chest.

“You can walk with me, if you’d like,” she offers casually, trying not to react to the gratitude that blooms on Sahar’s face.

“Okay,” she says.

Rachel smiles in spite of herself. “And you know, I might need someone to hold my hand. In case it gets too scary.”

Sahar smiles with her, too smart to fall for it but also happy to play along. She agrees and goes to start now, taking Rachel’s hand in her small one, but lets go when Evie complains that she’s preventing Rachel from working on her bracelet. She settles on holding onto the hem of Rachel’s shirt instead and Rachel decides to leave the wonky bit on the bracelet as a punishment for Evie being such a nuisance.

The bracelet is almost complete by the end of dinner, but Rachel chooses to leave it in the cabin as they change into long pants and apply bug spray for the ghost walk. Her hands will be occupied tonight and she’d rather make Evie wait another day than reward her for her pestering.

Still, Evie ties her hair back with disappointment as Rachel tells her to empty-handed. Rachel decides it doesn’t bother her but it takes a minute for the decision to stick.

“You know my mom and me take walks after dinner in the park,” Sahar says as the camp sets out into the forest, happily clutching Rachel’s hand.

It’s still light out, but as soon as they’re in the trees the light becomes dimmer, scattered, and any face Rachel tries to pin down only swims into butchered shadows. Nose here, ear there. She does her best to focus on the bright shirt of the child in front of her instead.

“Is that so,” she says.

Sahar hums in response. “I think you’d like her.”

“Your mother?”

The group moves slowly, a pilgrimage through the trees towards some place they’ll only know is the destination when everyone stops. The counselors were told to amp up their kids on the walk there but Rachel’s happy to let her girls take their time, picking up sticks and pebbles and bumping into each other like contented cattle. They’ll be whining soon enough, she’s sure. At least for now they’re smiling.

Sahar nods and smiles as well, likely thinking about her mother.

“She’s the nicest person in the whole world,” she says. “She’s from Iran. She came here all by herself because she wanted to live somewhere free.”

“That’s very brave of her,” Rachel says, and looks again at the bright yellow shirt up ahead.

She can feel the warmth of Sahar’s hand in her own, moving slightly with their slow pace, holding it like Rachel now imagines her to hold her mother’s hand at the park. Briefly, staring straight ahead, she lets herself imagine she’s walking with a daughter of her own; they aren’t in the middle of about one hundred and fifty people, trekking through the forest at dusk. They’re in a park somewhere, a ravine maybe, and the child at her side loves her. She blinks and lets it go.

“You came here from England, right?” Sahar asks.

Rachel steps over a small branch, realizing too late she should have kicked it out of the way so no child behind her trips on it. Oh well.

“That’s correct,” she says.

It’s only boys behind her, Tony and Seth and Mark, Sarah up near the front with Cosima and Delphine and Paul likely somewhere close behind. She’s not sure how she ended up surrounded by boys but appreciates that it keeps her away from any uncomfortable interactions with certain people she’s avoiding. And there’s the added bonus of being nowhere near Alison.

She’d much rather listen to duel noises from the rambunctious boys behind her and their incessant chatter than risk having to hear Alison’s shrill tone. Especially after having to be the one tell her about Beth.

(She’s furious with Sarah, in secret. Absolutely livid.)

(She isn’t. She needs to be but she can’t keep it in her and it’s _eating_ at her.)

“Do you like it here?” Sahar asks as she hops over a muddy patch, pulling down on Rachel’s arm for leverage.

It’s all anyone ever seems to ask – when they hear her accent, when they figure out she’s a transplant. It never ceases to annoy her but she finds herself wanting to give Sahar a positive answer, something that will make her feel good, because this is a country Sahar believes to be wonderful. Rachel can’t taint it for her.

“It’s my home,” she says. “I wouldn’t know how to live anywhere else.”

She’s not sure she could even take this body back to England, after everything it’s seen. The second she stepped foot on English soil she’d likely begin to rot for trying to go back to a place that doesn’t know her.

Sahar accepts it with a smile and they continue on in a comfortable silence, stopping once for Sahar to grab a stick and again when the group slows to a halt in front of them.

It’s only a small clearing but everyone manages to fit, a few people sitting back in the trees and Rachel joining Sahar in the dirt, telling herself she doesn’t look for Sarah as she glances around the circular swarm of faces. The director stands in the middle, smiling. Alison sits near his feet and Rachel accidentally catches her eye, expecting a scowl but receiving a blankness that haunts her.

There are a scattering of faces that can’t pull it together tonight. Paul sits by Tony, bruise all but gone and lost in his own thoughts. Delphine has her head against Cosima’s shoulder. Sarah- 

Rachel doesn’t look for Sarah.

She sees her chewing her lip anyway, knees up, so small she could pass for a camper. It’s sickening.

“I don’t like ghost stories,” Sahar murmurs as the director starts his tale.

Rachel doesn’t like trail mix, but the bags are being handed out anyway. She gives Sahar’s hand a squeeze.

“None of it’s real,” she tells her. She finally looks away from Sarah. “Don’t let it get to you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel’s aware the counselors are having a campfire that night, once the kids are asleep. (Delphine invited her, even, catching her as the groups began to separate at the end of the walk, but the look on her face was too much for Rachel to even consider it.) It’s something she can conjure up in her head: the image of them all laughing, cheeks flushed, tossing sticks into the fire without a single thought of consequence.

She thinks about it as she brushes her teeth, avoiding her reflection in the mirror. She doesn’t – and then does – imagine Sarah sitting on a log, the wet rim of a bottle against her lips.

(The thing is, she had considered it. Delphine waited and Rachel truly gave it a minute of contemplation. But she knew Sarah would be there.)

(Or she knew Sarah wouldn’t be, and that was her only reason for going.)

Her girls fall asleep quickly tonight – it’s the exhaustion of walking and fright, pulling them swiftly into dreams. She leaves her door open so she can hear them breathing in their bunks. And then she’s out of her own bed, feet in tennis shoes before she even has time to reflect on it.

It’s cool outside, comfortable, crickets perforating the darkness as she crunches twigs underfoot. The picnic tables are empty tonight and she tries not to wonder about Sarah.

There’s a body in her bed or there isn’t; Rachel didn’t hear snoring as she tried to settle herself in her own bed, but she knows Sarah’s taken to just lying there in the dark, regretfully awake, very likely still dwelling on Beth. She can see it on Sarah’s face every time she looks at her – the guilt and the ghost, and it’s setting into her in a way Rachel can’t think about.

(The thing is Sarah’s weak. She can’t move forward and she’s letting it turn to tar.)

The moon is a wedge of lemon above her, souring the clouds that try to smother it. She strains her neck staring up and then tries to make out any of the stars around it, having always wanted to be good at these things, knowing constellations and remembering their stories, recognizing only vague outlines that mean something to other people.

There’s a dipper in a break between clouds. Or a belt. Or a crown. She stares too long and suffers for it, a sharp pain shooting down her neck and into her spine.

She moves on. The trees whisper.

Sarah’s face was unchanging during the ghost stories, first chewing her lip and then skin around her fingernails, looking right through Rachel when she did happen to look over. It’s awful. Her children shouldn’t have to see her like this. One of them was hurt this morning and Rachel wouldn’t be surprised if it was Sarah’s fault.

Negligent. That’s what it is. Sarah’s being negligent, and Rachel was only going to the campfire to tell her so.

A branch whips back as Rachel tries to brush past it and she can instantly feel the sting across her bare thigh. Not enough to really bleed, but enough to require cleaning if she’d like to avoid infection.

(She thought having Sarah shower off that night would prevent this. She thought they could sit there and work through it and it wouldn’t…)

(It devours, this sort of thing. It consumes.)

She can’t even see the moon through the thick of trees. It’s dark enough for her skin to look grey, everything blurring into shadow. She almost misses the form up ahead. But she didn’t miss it last Thursday and she can’t tonight. It’s the same rock. It’s the same curl of smoke.

“Is this some sick game of yours?” Sarah snaps, her disgust visible as Rachel moves closer.

“What?” Rachel asks.

She looks at the rock without meaning to, unable to tell if any blood remains. It’s too cloudy a night. Sarah’s perched on it anyway.

Ash flicks into the forest. Sarah shakes her head and inhales, cigarette to her pursed lips.

“You can’t even look at me in the day,” she says. “And then everyone’s asleep and here you are, some sad puppy following me everywhere.”

“I’m- not,” Rachel manages to get out, but then Sarah’s scowling and the anger curls tight and hot in Rachel’s stomach.

“Just bloody pick one,” Sarah says as she pushes off the rock.

A shadow stays in her place and Rachel still doesn’t know if it’s a stain.

“It’s not my fault you need someone to look after you,” Rachel says, stepping back as Sarah moves forward. It comes out cold and sharp and she lets slip a smile as it lands in flesh.

Sarah’s hand blocks her neck this time as she brings the cigarette up, wrist curled in defense.

“So, that’s what you think this is, then,” Sarah mutters. Smoke clouds her words.

Rachel runs her fingers down the front of her silky shorts, light and grounding. “You’re still stuck on this Beth thing, Sarah. It’s concerning.”

Sarah grows wild all at once, eyes round and mouth open and eyebrows up, her body suddenly taking up so much more space as she begins to laugh and then darken into something that has Rachel instinctively stepping back. She hits the tree behind her and lets it pin her into place. Sarah, again, steps forward.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah punctures, hot as the end of her cigarette, “ _what_?”

The words are suddenly acrid on Rachel’s tongue as she folds them over and in the dark she can imagine Sarah isn’t staring her down, isn’t holding her to the bark with such malice it has her heart racing, like she didn’t just rip whatever fragile thing had formed between them.

(A cobweb, she decides, as she moves her hand along the trunk and touches something disturbingly soft.)

“You need to move past it,” she says, soft this time like whatever’s on her fingertips.

It still seems to strike as a knife and Sarah jams a hand into her hair as she glances away, desperate, and angry, her body suddenly wooden.

“You have no idea,” Sarah says. It sounds like she means to continue but nothing follows it.

They could both be trees themselves, standing so still like this in the darkness.

Rachel takes the moment to push off the bark, gently, and match Sarah for height. Somehow she still feels smaller. Somehow Sarah still doubles her in every way.

“She _lived_ , Sarah, don’t you understand?” Rachel asks. She straightens so she’s a little bit taller. “You found her in time and she’s alive, and there’s no point in you carrying around all this unnecessary- what is it, guilt? Responsibility? My god, even you’re smart enough to-”

She supposes she should have seen the slap coming, but the sting of pain across her cheek has her back against the tree and Sarah, seething, lands a step in front of her, breath hot across her face.

“I can’t believe you,” Sarah spits, and the venom and the heat and Sarah so close to her has Rachel launching forward, needing to smother the words on her lips.

Sarah bites back. Rachel tastes blood and her own cigarettes, and she deepens the kiss into something more painful just for that. She doesn’t feel Sarah’s hand in her hair until it’s yanking, and her own hand is marking skin through Sarah’s shirt, and when they finally pull apart her lungs ache, desperate for air.

She tries to catch her breath to say something before Sarah does, taking in the caged animal shine to Sarah’s eyes, but then Sarah lunges and Rachel’s gasp is swallowed up between them as she finds herself pinned to the tree again.

Sarah’s lips _hurt_ ; it’s a soreness Rachel tries to consume, greedily accepting the thigh that presses up between her legs. She feels her own dampness through the thin material of her shorts and briefly wonders what Sarah makes of that before teeth give way to tongue and Rachel rolls her hips forward.

The desperation is mortifying – she has a chance to absorb it as Sarah’s mouth moves down her neck, hot and wet, and the dark of the forest stares at Rachel like an unblinking mirror.

Then her breath hitches and her eyes snap shut, fingers pushing aside fabric, the sound of her torrential heart in her own ears drowning out any noises she might be making. Without Sarah’s mouth on hers she feels naked. And then completely dismantled, and it’s over before she has time to think about it – just an ache where Sarah’s hand had been and she doesn’t want to admit Sarah’s the one who leaves first.

But Rachel’s the one left shivering in the heart of the woods.

And in the morning, Rachel finds her cigarettes wedged through the crack in her small window, crushed and hollow as she feels for the mark of teeth in her own skin. They edge every bruise; she allows herself three minutes in the mirror and then buries everything in makeup and denial.

 

* * *

 

 

Rachel spends the next week ignoring Sarah – except that Sarah somehow, suddenly, disappears, not even showing up for meals in the mess hall, and Rachel’s ignoring looks quite a bit more like maintaining a sour expression while the world continues around her.

(Unreasonably, after Sarah left her that night, Rachel made the mistake of considering Paul. _Paul_. The other half to Beth, and Sarah-)

(At one point there was sympathy but Rachel walked back feeling grimy, an object covered in smeared fingerprints, something to have been consumed and conquered and spat out. Paul. She considered Paul. She considered the warning signs.)

Sarah inexplicably isn’t even there during movie night, Rachel finding herself holding eye contact with an empty Alison for far longer than tolerable before she manages to shift herself into a corner.

Sarah misses the campfire. Sarah skips karaoke.

Rachel traps Delphine in a doorway on Tuesday with her knuckles white as she grips the doorframe until she realizes what she’s doing, managing only wide eyes and half a raspy word before twisting out of the way and letting her pass. _Where is she hiding_ , she was going to ask. But that isn’t the point of ignoring. And Delphine seemed resolute anyway.

Wednesday night she grows confident, sitting near Paul in the rec hall as he laughs and teases, and even though it’s just for show there’s a moment where Rachel understands it, briefly, why Sarah let him be the open flame to her powdery moth wings. He invites Rachel to the campfire that night. She doesn’t say she’ll consider it. She also doesn’t say no.

It seems novel enough to warrant cataloguing, young adults mixing fire with alcohol and momentarily all caring about each other. The laughter. The ease. The absence of two notable people, and she doesn’t think about either of them.

Paul brings her a drink that Cosima promptly intercepts, filling the space on the log beside her, joined by Delphine not long after and the two of them share with Rachel something spiced and heavy. None of them mention the absence or the faint marks along Rachel’s neck; it’s a balmy enough night to let everything fall away, a pleasant burn to the alcohol, Cosima warm at her side.

A long-haired girl from the senior camp gives out massages on a log near the fire. In the bushes, someone vomits. Rachel hardly notices as the mosquitoes come out and people return to their cabins and she herself ends up stumbling through the forest.

Her mouth tastes like cinnamon – she thinks of Hot Hearts, of Valentine’s Day as a child and the treats her mother would send in her lunchbox. She stops to rest against a tree. A mosquito flits around her face and she only barely manages to swat it away, her hand slow and clumsy in the air.

The last time she felt like this she was alone, tucked into a corner at some work party of her father’s, clutching her heels in one hand and trotting their sharp points across the marble tiles. New Year’s, perhaps. Voices were counting down. (She vomited alone as well, she remembers. Her father was looking for her and she was reapplying her lipstick in a long stretch of mirrors.)

There weren’t any mosquitoes then, she thinks, as she swats at another one near her ear. Nor was there the crunching sound that’s only now become discernible.

She tilts her head and Sarah’s teetering form comes into view, parting branches and cursing to herself, wrapped in some boy’s jacket despite the heat. Rachel recognizes it as Tony’s. Sarah spots her, and freezes.

Sober Rachel would likely turn sharp on her heel at this – it’s a confrontation, and if Rachel knew how to move off the tree she’d be far into the forest by now. She moves her mouth slightly instead and wonders what the proper thing is to say. An apology? An accusation? If she’d let herself think about it before maybe she’d know how to feel now, staring at Sarah through five feet of forest like a rifle, bullets hot under her tongue.

Sarah inches closer and there’s a bottle in her hand. Whiskey. Rachel can smell it.

As Sarah advances Rachel realizes they’re near the lake, the sound of lapping water suddenly very clear and enough to let Rachel find her footing and meet Sarah halfway.

Rachel doesn’t think before kissing her, hands in her hair and it tastes like smoke again – it takes Rachel a moment to realize it’s her this time, it’s the campfire clinging to her, and Sarah’s mouth is sharp and hot with whiskey.

Sarah inhales as they break apart and then Rachel’s shirt is coming off, the air soupy where Sarah’s hands don’t touch. They stumble back into a tree. Rachel feels her skin tear against the bark, but then Sarah’s straddling her thigh and leaving new marks down her neck and Rachel can only focus on the ache building between her legs, and the wetness where Sarah moves against her, and her nails trying to bury themselves in Sarah’s back.

She grasps Sarah by the jaw and jerks her face upwards, needing Sarah’s mouth on hers like there’s a cyanide capsule to transfer, delighting in the moan that comes from it. The friction isn’t enough. Sarah guides her hand and it’s almost familiar, this desperation they keep passing back and forth. She wants to call her on it. She curls her fingers instead.

Sarah smothers the sound against Rachel’s lips, biting when it becomes too much. Rachel’s shivering again and she still aches and it doesn’t take long for Sarah to notice.

Rachel has tears down her cheeks, after. During. Everything tastes like salt and cinnamon. She sees Sarah look away.

And then Rachel’s struggling with the clasp of her bra, catching on the scratches down her back, and Sarah’s arms are around her and she’s doing it up for her and whispering something against Rachel’s shoulder. The glint of the whiskey bottle in the dirt is momentarily blinding. _I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. We’ve both been so…_

“We’re drunk,” Rachel finally says. Her cheeks are still wet. It stops Sarah’s whispers and Rachel realizes no, they aren’t so much anymore. A chill runs down her spine.

Sarah pulls back and just holds her, looking her in the eye.

She has dirt smeared across her forehead. Rachel’s chest hiccups with a stifled sob.

 _Don’t let go_ , Rachel wants to say, but she wishes Sarah was hurting her, wishes there were claws, and that the desire to kiss her again wasn’t independent from the alcohol. Sarah releases her anyway, as if startled into reality by the sound of Rachel’s tiny sob.

A wave hits the nearby shore with a slap and Sarah stumbles backwards. She has a hand over her mouth. Tony’s jacket is on the ground beside her.

The friendship bracelet around her wrist is only barely visible in the dark but Rachel knows the bloodstains well, picturing them even though everything’s a muted grey. Sarah mutters out an apology. Rachel wipes her cheeks and moments later she finds herself alone.

Again.

 _You stupid girl_ , she tells herself. Palm against her cheek. Tapping. _Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

She wades into the lake waist-deep, and after chilling herself to the bone finally heads back to the cabin, washing Sarah off her in a scalding shower and tucking herself between the cool sheets. The few hours of sleep she gets are infected by dreams of a mouth in the forest, devouring.

In the morning, at breakfast, Beth is returned with bandaged wrists.  

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth's return complicates everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the patience and your thoughtful reviews! and thanks to vi especially, for reading through all of this in a shitty word processor and being kind. 
> 
> this chapter was originally going to be the last, but i couldn't fit everything without major compromise so i decided it'd be best to split it. there will be one more coming.  
> (same warnings apply as chapter 4: a few mentions of vomit, references to suicide + beth's attempt, a little nsfw near the end.) we're sitting at around 21,000 words.

 

* * *

 

Sarah is in the breakfast line with Delphine when she hears Beth’s name being called, and then everyone is turned towards the open doors and in the dirt Beth stands pinned between her parents.

Minutes later half the counselors have filtered through the mouth of the mess hall and Beth stares blankly at her feet. She’s wearing long sleeves; the white edges of bandages peek out from underneath. Her hair is down and Sarah tries to look away when Beth’s mother fusses with it, shifting a glittery hairpin that doesn’t belong there.

Sarah stands next to Delphine who stands next to Paul, and somewhere behind them Sarah can feel Rachel’s presence; this heat of regret, singing through the fabric of her shirt.

“We’re all so happy she’s feeling better,” the director’s saying.

Beth’s mother wears lipstick that looks like blood and it glistens when she smiles, harsh and pinched, at both the director and her shadow of a daughter, taking another quick hand to Beth’s face that only manages to elicit a microscopic shrug.

It’s like watching Beth at thirteen, or nine, or five, trying to twist away without moving, her face an expressionless resignation and her father only a body on her other side. Sarah wants to snatch her and run. She shifts and Delphine presses tighter against her side.

Everyone ripples when Alison finally steps through, headband the blinding white of Beth’s bandaged wrists, and Sarah briefly thinks that this is the only time they’ll ever see Alison leaving her kids for anything before Alison has Beth by the elbow and takes the small cloth bag from her arm. There’s a whisper at Beth’s ear that Sarah tries not to witness, but she imagines as Alison pulls Beth away that it’s an apology, or a quiet _I missed you_ , or a warning of the lies that sprung up in her absence.

Alison shoulders the bag and walks Beth down the path to the cabins and Sarah realizes she’s walking her to the piles of glittery cards. Her stomach constricts. Dust kicks up in their wake.

“Come on,” Delphine says as Beth’s parents turn to the director, moving as one stiff unit of disappointment.

Sarah still doesn’t know if they’re divorced or together but it doesn’t make a difference. She knows what it’s done to their daughter. She follows Delphine back into the mess hall and slowly, like they’re only just waking up, everyone else moves back inside as well.

It’s the first time she’s sat at a table for a meal in just about a week, joining Delphine and Cosima at their shorter table that bruises the tops of her knees. The children stare at her, smiling shyly or with frowns of varying levels of interest. She doesn’t recognize any of them; it’s for the best, this turnover, but she can’t help thinking of Chloe and her thin blonde hair.

“She looks good,” Cosima says with a glance to her hands.

It sounds like she’s waiting for confirmation to decides if she believes her own statement and Delphine nods, bringing her cup to her lips. Cosima tugs on her own cup, enough to shift the liquid inside. She takes her coffee black. Sarah unwillingly thinks of Rachel.

Really, Beth looks more or less the same. Sarah isn’t sure if that means anything either way.

She glances over to her own table, catching sight of the empty spot her girls have left her and the way Rachel positions herself near the middle as if she’s assumed responsibility for the two groups in Sarah’s absence. It’s different, seeing her in the light. Sarah’s sober and Rachel’s face looks like barely disguised panic.

Delphine follows Sarah’s line of sight and then looks back to Sarah, knowing but quiet. She still hasn’t asked where Sarah’s been for a week. No one has. Sarah at least expected Rachel to, seeing her this morning, but she guesses if Rachel didn’t last night she wasn’t going to at all.

(She told Tony it was a Paul thing. He was the only person who wouldn’t care about the truth.)

(“So,” he’d said. “I guess you’ll need someone to smuggle you out some food.”)

Cosima hands a piece of toast over to Delphine, having buttered it and added a smear of strawberry jam, and Delphine takes it like this is routine, passing over her own bowl of oatmeal for Cosima to share. Sarah watches with a lump in her throat. She never really considered that this is something she could want, and then she tries not to let her body shift in Rachel’s direction.

Of course it would be something toxic. Everything always is with Sarah.

She has a headache she’s blaming on the alcohol, looking for a hangover that seems to only exist as some form of sickly regret that she’s sure sits deep in the pit of Rachel’s stomach as well. Twice. She let it happen twice. (She let Rachel do it twice.) (She let her summer go like this twice.)

Delphine nudges the bowl of cereal in front of Sarah, everything quickly turning to mush as Sarah ignores it. The sugar creates a shimmery film on the surface of the milk. Felix loves this stuff.

“You have to put _something_ in your stomach,” Delphine says, as if she knows it’s currently lead.

Worse than lead. It feels like Rachel dragging them backwards into a tree.

Rachel’s tight grip in her hair.

She’s nauseous.

“Delphine,” Cosima says. It sits there and a kid stares between the three of them like they’re giving a eulogy.

Delphine gives up with raised hands and a shrug that feels sharp enough to be about more than just cereal, and Sarah blinks at her curled fingers, remembering them red and trembling. All that blood that Beth lost, scrubbed off in sinks and buried in the sand. Sarah notices Delphine hasn’t touched any of the food in front of her either.

 _She looked like a ghost though, right?_ Sarah wants to ask. _It wasn’t just me?_

But then they’d be talking about it; Cosima would finally get to bring it up, and she’d look at Sarah like that shrink S sent her to a while back who wore the same kind of glasses and also thought she could understand stuff she didn’t experience.

She wonders again what Delphine’s said. What kind of person Sarah was made out to be in the retelling. _I was so scared, Cos. You have to understand._

Cosima reaches around Delphine to brush her knuckles against Sarah’s arm, smiling in sympathy when Sarah looks over. It should feel patronizing but mostly it makes Sarah realize how much she’s missed her these past few weeks. The last time they really talked was… the night Beth happened.

 _Everything_ has changed since then. Sarah can’t stomach it.

She’s about to get up to go take a walk or something when Alison comes through the open doors, Beth trailing quietly behind her, the two of them holding on by mere fingers like Beth could go at any moment. It stills the mess hall – maybe it doesn’t, but it stills Sarah, and she holds her breath, and Alison seats Beth at their table like no time has passed at all before heading off to grab her a tray.

Delphine takes Sarah’s elbow.

Beth’s hands glitter red.

Beth doesn’t turn her head at all, and Sarah watches that hairpin glimmer until her eyes burn.

 

* * *

 

Sarah has archery with Paul after breakfast. He keeps handing out arrows and she keeps snapping the string of an unused bow, exactly what the kids have been told not to do at the start of each archery session but no one seems to notice her doing because they’ve all sort of been slapped into a strange stupor. Or: they have targets to hit and it’s only her and Paul who can’t manage to pull it together.

She wonders when he’s going to speak to her.

If he’ll give in and speak at all.

Poor Paul, she keeps thinking. His girlfriend comes back and doesn’t even look at him. If she doesn’t think about why it could almost be last summer – and she stands off to the side in that pair of shorts she never could wear again, and Beth just grimaces between them like they’ve both let her down…

But there isn’t a heat wave and she doesn’t have a fresh cut chewing the curve of her spine.

(Rachel does, now. Rachel has scrapes. Sarah can still feel their quiet wetness on her fingertips and she snaps the bow’s string again and lets it vibrate, hard.)

“Sarah,” Paul finally says.

He’s wearing a _visor_ today. She wants to shove it down his throat. He hands out another arrow and the kid doesn’t say thank-you.

She shuts her eyes, just for a second; pictures opening them to find him standing there with Beth and her smiling at him like she truly does love him, short sleeves, because this is a fantasy, and then Sarah’s eyes are open for real and Paul’s alone and watching her like she’s the one who just got back.

“Yeah,” she says. All anyone seems to do these days is say her name. As if that could ask everything.

Paul’s shoulders lift and then drop and she knows he’s trying. _It’s okay_ , she wants to say. It’s the first time she’s wanted to lie to him for a good reason.

She doesn’t get a chance to do anything because a minute later Quinn comes over without any arrows and bumps her body into Sarah’s, like a cat falling sideways to the floor. Like she knows she’ll land comfortably. Paul looks to Quinn and his eyes are soft when they’re back on Sarah.

“I’m not allowed to shoot real arrows today,” Quinn says, but she has her body positioned in such a way between Sarah and Paul that Sarah doesn’t believe this is why she’s over here.

For a minute she regrets saying anything when they were in the lake last week. But there’s a firm hint of responsibility in Quinn’s expression as she plays the shield, maturing her in a matter of moments. There’s a sureness to the way she holds herself: the curve and the spine. _It’s okay_ , Sarah wants to say again, and it’s another lie, but she means it for different reasons.

Sarah shifts an inch and Quinn steps back with her, eyes on Paul as he watches.

“How’s Beth?” Quinn challenges.

Everything in Sarah constricts. Paul, to his credit, remains stoic. (She catches the tensing of his jaw. She decides to ignore it.)

“They say she’s feeling better,” Paul says, and he looks between them.

Quinn finally separates her body from Sarah’s. “I hope she is.”

“Me too,” Sarah says.

And Quinn turns and seems to spot something in her, because then her face mirrors how Sarah imagines her own to look. As if, in one half-second, Sarah managed to confess to everything.

She sees it in Paul, actually; the way he steps forward as soon as it happens, intercepting with an arrow Quinn can’t have and a promise that he believes she has it in her to handle it. He moves her onwards so quickly Sarah doesn’t even really notice the target being hit and the sound of the arrow slicing through dense foam or Paul shifting so that his body is the barrier now but he doesn’t say a word – just plays it out with military precision and refuses to place blame.

“Why don’t you go sit,” he murmurs after a while, motioning towards the bench. “You deserve a rest.”

She stares at him long enough to watch his sturdy hand adjust the visor to cut the sun and then his eyes are dark and she pulls herself to the splintery bench without a look back to anything. For good measure, she plucks the string of the bow once more. It breaks between her fingers and makes the sound of something scared falling. She drops it in the grass and then it’s silent.

When she was nine, when she was small, she shattered some pottery thing of Mrs. S’s on purpose; she let the shards cut her bare feet and wondered if this would get her returned to the social worker without another word, her whole life condensed again to one plastic bag, but S just handed her a dustpan and a broom with a firm _you make a mess, you clean it_.

There was no raised voice. There was no back of a hand. She didn’t have to sit in the social worker’s cluttered car, fingers wrapped too tight in the flimsy plastic handle of her baggage.

She wants to call her mother.

Paul comes over just as she’s running her palms along her bare thighs, hating the stubble but not wanting to think about razor blades. He sits next to her like he’s been thinking the same things; like he can’t believe they’re still all carrying on like nothing happened, like he doesn’t know how to stare into the sun when Beth’s in long sleeves. She gets the visor.

“It didn’t-” He stops and presses his hands together, hard, eyes on the packed dirt. “It didn’t feel real until today. I don’t know. I guess I…”

“I know,” Sarah says.

She focuses on the anthill by his feet, where small armies march out in lines and over the toe of his sneaker and move as if they’ll be here long after the people leave. He shifts his foot as he sits up straighter and the ants scatter for a moment and then regroup. She doesn’t know why she always wanted to squash them as a kid; it feels cruel now.

“I don’t want to talk to her,” she admits, soft.

For the first time, Paul’s hand on hers doesn’t feel like a threat. Just an acknowledgment.

“Lucky Alison’s here, huh?” he says, and she catches the strange, kind expression on his face before it goes.

The last thing she wants to do is talk about it but she wants to talk about it – she wants to ask him what it’s like, and she wants to know when he knew, and she wants it to be put into words so she can pretend to understand it; understand loving someone like that, so completely. Both Alison and Paul. She wants to know if it’s possible. And then she crushes the anthill with her boot.

“Lucky,” she says. She takes her hand away and he doesn’t shift his gaze.

At the end of the line of kids Quinn holds the arrow between two fingers, turning and turning it, ignoring her target with a soft, placid frown. Sarah looks down the staggered line at each of their faces: the triumph and the concentration, the disappointment, the wanting. Children in the midst of growing up. When she looks back to Quinn, the arrow’s flying.

 

* * *

 

It’s cold as Rachel lowers her body into the lake – she wants to laugh that they’re practicing survival skills, now, in the shade of a wall of pine trees, canoes overturned and everyone floating. She wants to kick until she’s in the sun again, drifting. She wants to sink. She’s strapped into the same orange lifejacket as everyone else and it billows up over her ears and all she can hear is the thrash of disturbed water.

Over by one of the red canoes Tony twists in soft circles, his boys bobbing around him as they too are swallowed up by their lifejackets. He seems unfazed; wet, a little cold, but willing to go where the current takes him.

Which is nowhere: Rachel didn’t think she’d see a day where the lake wasn’t rushing by, eager to burst out of the long inlet and back to its canyon of a body, but here she is in the water unmoving. She’s sure it has to do with the lack of wind but with her current state of affairs she can’t help but see it as mockery. _You can’t run from this. You can’t just leave it behind._

She knows. She vomited in the shower, over her bare feet.

She watched Sarah ignore her at breakfast.

It isn’t as if Rachel has anywhere to go.

“All right now we’re gonna flip the canoes and climb back in,” the lifeguard says, dry, on the shore.

She exchanges an unimpressed look with Tony and they both hang back while their kids set about achieving this goal.

Earlier she wanted to say something about the shirt he was wearing in the water but didn’t, sensing it might be personal, and is pleased with herself for that decision as she now has an ally. Only for the time being, but it’s enough to float near him and know he’s as willing to flop onto an unsteady canoe like some beached whale as she is.

The point is survival, she knows, but what she’s saying is it doesn’t feel urgent anymore. Not in light of… everything. Those who don’t know seem just as uneasy as those who do. She wonders if Paul would say anything, and if Tony turns mindlessly in the water because he’s chosen not to think about it.

She would very much like to choose not to think about it.

“Everybody in the canoes,” the lifeguard says, sharper this time, as if this will motivate Tony and her to follow the kids.

A few heads turn to the two of them from wobbling canoes, bodies hanging off the sides. Rachel looks to Tony. His mouth twists into a smirk.

“Think we’re good here, actually,” he says. “But thanks.”

Rachel can’t help the smile that slips out.

The lifeguard stares for an uncomfortable minute before directing his gaze back to the kids, encouraging the stragglers while continuing to stay dry and warm on land. He’s a bit sunburnt, even in the thick of trees, and there are burrs stuck to his leg hair, and Rachel settles into mentally dissecting him flaw by flaw as her legs hang dead underneath her. It’s easier than considering anything else. Easier than swimming.

Tony floats over a second later, looking as ridiculous as she feels with the lifejacket up by his ears like that. “Didn’t think we’d really be in the water today,” he says.

 _Because Beth came back?_ she nearly asks.

But it’s a non-event to everyone else, she keeps telling herself. All they know is the flu, is dehydration, that she’s returned and looks the same, and Rachel hopes no one’s looked at the bandages. IVs can leave bruises, she imagines telling them all. Beth wouldn’t want to scare the kids with that.

There’s no reason to doubt it except Sarah’s face. Rachel hopes no one’s looked at her at all.

“You know there’s snapping turtles in the lake?” Tony says, close enough that Rachel can feel the water swirl from his slowly treading legs.

“How lovely,” she replies.

Tony smiles, tongue between his teeth. “You’re not scared?”

“It takes a lot more than that,” she says, voice softer than intended.

He looks at her for a moment. She raises an eyebrow and he looks away.

“Your back’s all scratched up,” he says casually, but he also says it to a floating clump of algae and Rachel involuntarily tenses. “I wasn’t sure if you knew. I saw it earlier when we-”

“Yes,” she cuts in.

His shoulders lift and the lifejacket lifts with it, momentarily swallowing him up to his nose. He looks like a child like this; curious and apologetic, like everyone keeps leaving him behind.

“Sorry,” he says.

She feels like apologizing too, for not being able to explain why there’s suddenly a line between the counselors and everyone’s been quiet since breakfast. It’s the first time she’s felt anything like sympathy towards a boy and it strikes something cold through her chest as he seems to see it in her. _You’re not special_ , she projects. _I’m just disappointingly weak._

One of the canoes manages to tip over again, sending kids sputtering and yelling into the water as the responsible child bobs up with disgrace. Tony takes it in and then reluctantly kick-swims over – to help and to defuse and to maybe get away from Rachel. She swallows. Wishes she could fix her hair without getting everything wet. With a huff she begins to propel herself in the other direction, towards the shore, ignoring the look the lifeguard gives her.

None of her girls are still in the water anyway; their canoes float painlessly, in the sun where Rachel would like to be. A couple of them are playing a hand game.

She unclips her lifejacket as soon as she’s on the shore, pine needles sticking to her wet skin as she scoots farther up the small embankment. Between the trees she catches a brief whiff of Sarah (leather, whiskey, something faint and sweet) and has two fingers on her lips before it goes, her chest suddenly aching and terribly empty.

She can feel each scratch down her back. They sting when she thinks of them. (It stings when she thinks of her.)

They were _drunk_ , that was the point. They were angry.

Sarah was lonely.

Rachel was a body.

She can’t keep rewriting it as something that doesn’t end where it started; it will be about Beth until Rachel stops thinking about it, and then it will cease to exist.

God, she thought she washed it off of her last night in the water but maybe going back in coated her in it again, like an oil spill that lives on the surface until something goes and gets caught in it. She’s seen the dish soap commercials. She’s the duck in this scenario, feathers slicked down black and shining. Sarah’s the oil rig, maybe. The hole. Sarah doesn’t stick around for the aftermath.

There _isn’t_ an aftermath. Rachel pulls a leaf from the underside of her thigh. There’s a new day where Beth came back. There’s a handful of scratches that will heal. No scar.

She doesn’t let herself consider an alternative, where Sarah feels anything about this.

She knows better.

 

* * *

 

Rachel’s girls are exhausted by arts and crafts. They arrive late, hair dripping, falling into seats at the empty table as Rachel takes in whose group is waiting patiently across from them. And then she braces herself to be told off for her tardiness and just stands there as Alison doesn’t even seem to register her presence.

“Sorry we’re late,” she says anyway, needing to put _something_ on Alison’s face other than a blank stare.

Alison gives her a curt nod, a tight smile. _It’s fine_. She’s standing near the art specialist but isn’t micromanaging and Rachel lingers in the doorway for a full minute, waiting, before giving up and heading to her small table in the corner.

It makes sense, if she thinks about it, that Beth’s return would hit harder than Beth leaving in the first place. Of course people seem calm in the face of an emergency. They pride themselves on it: being able to handle it, to move through the following hours as if nothing changed. (Rachel knows that all too well.) But after, when it’s over…

Alison has little wisps of hair curling out of her slipping ponytail, the bags under her eyes a noticeable shade of purple. Rachel thinks of the scene at breakfast – Alison leading Beth down the path, knuckles white where she clutched Beth’s elbow.

It changes everything.

She’s sure it was a documentary or something, a story on the radio, of some tragedy – a shipwreck or stranding, something involving water and a storm – that came into her conscious years ago where the survivors told of the immediate, overwhelming focus on just staying alive. How everything else became unimportant and they just swam and kept their heads above water because it was all they could do, even when they couldn’t, even when they were so sure they’d drown and were tired enough to want it.

But after, they said. After they made it through. When they had to face the water again and found themselves incapacitated even though they were safe. Beth is the tragedy amplified, coming back without even an apology.

Rachel presses her fingertips into freshly-made cuts on the tabletop and stops thinking about it.

The kids are making pinwheels today – Alison hovers, quietly, helping to fold paper when needed, following the specialist around the table, and it’s such a benign craft that Rachel wonders if it was planned this way. Something sweet and simple that requires hands-on focus.

Rachel almost wants to make one herself.

She stands up, leaving the carved heart on the table behind, and drifts over to where Alison and the specialist now lean against a counter in observation. None of her kids look up as she passes and she briefly feels like some sort of ghost before Alison glances at her and shifts to make space as if they’re two people who have been something like friends in the past.

_I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Beth’s at the hospital…_

Alison clears her throat. It means nothing.

Rachel watches Sierra try to fold the same piece of paper three times before crumpling it and starting with a new one and wonders if they’re supposed to say anything, turning to the women next to her before just letting her hands behind her curl around the edge of the counter. It seems they’re going to let it run its course. Or she’s the only one who noticed and, again, has no idea what she is and isn’t supposed to do as a counselor.

She shifts her attention instead to a spool of something shiny half unwound on top of one of the shelves, glimmering as the mid-morning sun hits it like a long tangled thread of water. And then she’s thinking of the moonlight on the lake last night and of Sarah and her hands and inhales sharply.

Alison looks over, inquiring.

Rachel frowns.

“I thought you were supposed to be with Beth from now on,” she says. “Not let her go unsupervised.”

Rachel heard her volunteer herself at the end of breakfast, catching the director on his way out like it was some great privilege to be Beth’s monitor. (Alison’s word. Rachel would have used something crueler but it wasn’t her conversation.) She gets it, though. Not wanting to take your eyes off something you thought you’d lost because you know how easily these things are taken from you.

Alison makes a sound between a sigh and a scoff, straightening up like there’s something to defend.

“Just when she isn’t with another staff member, when she could…” There’s a pause where it looks like she might say more but then she seems to remember there are other people in the room and just shrugs.

“I see,” Rachel says, an eye on the specialist who’s doing a very good job at pretending not to eavesdrop.

“She’s with Paul now anyway,” Alison says, quieter and sharper. “Soccer skills. Did you know they both play in a league?”

Rachel would expect it to come out bitter but it isn’t, just empty, and Alison stares ahead at the mess on one of the tables like someone who’s told this story a hundred times before. For a brief terrible second Rachel considers it in the context of Sarah, this resignation, as if a universe would ever exist in which Rachel cared to the point of letting go. And then she mentally swallows acid and tries to formulate an appropriate response.

“I didn’t know,” she says stupidly.

Alison eyes her and then looks back to the table where Raniyah and Sierra are snipping paper to tiny shreds, pinwheels abandoned.

“They’re both very good. I’m happy that she has someone who understands that part of her life.” Alison’s frowning. Rachel isn’t sure if she’s aware.

“She won the championship, didn’t she?” the specialist asks, leaning forward like she’s given up on pretending she isn’t listening.

Alison nods, the smile too sharp to be real, and Rachel takes in just how long Alison and Beth have been coming to this camp and how many people have known them over the years; have known Beth before it got this bad and who she must have been. It sparks a weird twinge of jealousy that Rachel does her best to smother, not even sure where it came from.

She remembers, of course, the seemingly black and white versions of her mother, a retrospectively stark before and after. But most of it was a slowly-forming grey. And she wonders if anyone could have seen it coming. With Beth. She’s thinking about Beth.

And Alison and the specialist are talking about Beth, uncomfortably cheerful small talk that has Rachel pushing off the counter and returning to her scarred up table in the corner before anyone can remember she was part of the conversation.

It’s too much to try to think of her in these happy vignettes, accomplishments and interests that don’t fit the girl that came back with bandages.

Maybe Rachel should be happy. It so easily could have been a funeral.

She bites the inside of her cheek at the thought, immediately sickened by herself.

(She doesn’t even remember her mother’s funeral. It was in a church, she’s fairly certain, and it was raining, but apart from a run in her stockings that she picked into a hole her mother would have hated she has no real memory at all.)

A darkness takes over the tabletop and she glances up to find Alison standing there, blocking the sun as if it’s completely normal for her to be here. The specialist is busy with the next craft so maybe she’s lonely. Or maybe there’s only one person in the room who knows about Beth and standing here is the closest she can get to bringing it up.

It invokes a strange sense of responsibility in Rachel that has her thinking back to the night on the porch with Sarah, doing her best in a minefield to keep anything from detonating. All those words she delivered with cupped hands. The necessary silences.

She hopes Delphine knows enough to watch over Sarah today; that Sarah isn’t stranded in this alone.

“You can sit, if you’d like,” she offers to Alison, who gives her a tiny smile and takes a seat.

All the chairs in the corner creak. Alison doesn’t seem to notice, her chair groaning like it’s on the verge of collapse.

Rachel waits for a shaky word, the start of a sentence that never finishes, anything to signify Alison’s sitting here thinking about Beth and just doesn’t know how to share that with another person despite desperately needing to. She nearly hands something over herself, wanting so badly to be on the other side of it. Alison presses her lips together in a thin line.

They both stare at the graffiti on the table, eyes on the heart that sits deeper than everything else.

There’s no way to vocalize this useless fear. She knows it, and yet she still expects Alison to find a way. To tell her how fragile everything is and let her know she means Beth. But _everything_.

_Do you know how quickly everything goes?_

Rachel would piece it together in a second, coming back with an equally coded response. Of course she does. She learned that so long ago she can barely remember what it felt like to still have faith.

Instead, Alison reaches out and traces the heart with two fingers, lingering on the point, her face a study of soft contemplation.

“You’re coming back next year, yes?” she asks and it’s the last thing Rachel expects.

Next year. As in, they somehow make it through this one.

She blinks. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

Alison takes her hand off the table and folds it neatly in her lap with the other one. She’s facing the kids now, away from Rachel.

“You should consider it,” she says. “You seem to be liked.”

“By the children,” Rachel says before she can stop herself, immediately pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth as if that will prevent Alison’s expression from changing.

“More than that,” Alison says.

She doesn’t turn around and Rachel silently thanks her for it.

There are so many responses, so many things Rachel could say, but she waits too long and ends up staying silent. Alison eventually finishes the exchange for the both of them and heads over to assist the specialist with the hard part of this craft and Rachel leans forward and lets everything sink in, hard like a stone through quicksand.

Next summer.

Surely everything could be different but she just keeps picturing herself coming back to look at Sarah the way Sarah looks at Paul, being nineteen and uncomfortably stuck, trying to move past things she still won’t understand while everyone pretends the worst never happened.

There is no version of the future that doesn’t feel like an improperly set fracture, fixed at the wrong angle. There is no version that doesn’t stem from Sarah.

 

* * *

 

For whatever reason, Rachel expects breakfast to have been a fluke, to come to lunch and find the mess hall devoid of Sarah’s presence like it has been for the past week, everything sorting itself back to the weird stasis like Beth didn’t come back this morning after all and Sarah sitting with the six year-olds was just a hallucination.

Rachel holds her breath, even. She brings her tray to the table with Evie bumping into her side and doesn’t exhale until she sees Sarah’s girls sitting alone with their newfound sense of responsibility.

“No Sarah?” she asks because she can’t help herself, taking a seat in the middle of the two groups. Evie scrambles to sit down beside her.

On her other side Madeleine hurries to finish chewing so she can respond and another girl, Naomi, points across the room with her fork.

“She’s with Delphine and Cosima,” Madeleine says after swallowing.

Rachel looks to the short table and finds her lungs threatening a hiccup as she spots Sarah sitting between the two girls, sandwich untouched in front of her. Rachel worries she’s spent too long watching and drops her gaze to her own plate.

“She’s been gone a while,” Evie says, hand on Rachel’s leg, doing her best to inch closer without Rachel noticing.

Rachel has noticed.

“She’s working through some stuff,” Naomi says as she lines up cubed fruit in a bowl to spear with her fork.

Rachel watches the prongs go in, everything stacked like a tower of blocks.

“She said that?”

It’s a level of self-awareness Rachel didn’t think Sarah would ever admit to having, let alone admit to her campers. But then it’s been a lot of surprises from Sarah lately. A lot of surprises from everyone.

“No,” Quinn states from down the table. “People have just been _gossiping_.”

Naomi and Madeleine have the decency to look mildly ashamed, a few of the other girls dropping their heads as well as Quinn scowls.

Regardless of Sarah’s intentions her absence at mealtimes has had an interesting effect on the girls, Rachel’s noticed – like they’ve all stepped up in their own way, having enough space for once to try on grown up personas, keeping themselves and each other in line. It’s like watching them become the people in their lives they believe to be worth emulating and if her presence wouldn’t end it Rachel would almost like to drag Sarah over to witness it.

_Look what you’ve inspired in them. Look how well they’re coming into their own._

And it’s been nice getting to chat with them as well, all parties aware she has no responsibilities here. Every so often they forget she’s an adult at all and she’s allowed to hold space in their eleven year-old world.

“It’s not gossip if it’s true,” Naomi finally says to her fruit salad. Rachel makes a noise of mild agreement. “I mean, we all know it.”

Daniela nods next to Quinn, glancing over at her sometimes-friend to see if she’ll be told off before realizing Quinn’s given up on the conversation completely and is busy stacking up crackers with a resigned grimace.

“Is she sad?” Evie says from Rachel’s lap.

Rachel glances down and notices she’s dropped a piece of lettuce in Evie’s hair. After a moment’s consideration, she brushes a hand over her head to get rid of it.

It’s strange, what the kids pick up. Sarah doesn’t eat with them so she’s working through some stuff. Beth disappears for two weeks but they accept she had the flu. Of course why would they look any further into that? Excluding the bandages there’s been no reason to question it. It isn’t as if any of them saw blood on anyone’s hands.

Madeleine bites her lip, glancing over at Naomi and then Rachel.

“Not really, I don’t know.”

“Kind of distant?” Naomi supplies. Madeleine nods.

“She’s been sick,” Rachel excuses, as if she could at all be some sort of authority in this, not even sure why she’s saying anything other than last night transpiring.

The girls all look at her like she’s just told them they’re sitting in the mess hall.

She exhales.

“We think it’s Paul,” one of the girls says from the end of the table. Ava, Rachel reminds herself.

The benefit of being alone with them at every meal is she’s finally getting a chance to see them as individuals, not just Sarah’s girls. So now there are twenty kids she grudgingly cares about.

The table hushes, a few heads turning to Ava as if she’s just spilled some terrible secret.

Rachel tries to remember what it was like to be eleven and know more than she thought she should, carrying it carefully between her shoulder blades like a knife. The expressions here seem about right: embarrassment, guilt, exhaustion. She can picture them whispering to each other as they walk through the forest, putting child pieces together with solemn faces.

It would be so simple if it was just Paul. Rachel almost wants to confirm just so their worries will stay small.

“We know they had a thing,” Daniela says like someone might slap her hands at any moment.

Evie sits up from Rachel’s lap to hear better. Rachel looks over and sees that all her girls are listening, pretending to be absorbed in their meals or just blatantly watching.

“And he has a girlfriend,” Naomi says.

Madeleine drops her gaze. “Beth.”

Beth. Who, right now, is sitting very still next to Alison, trying to keep her bandages tucked out of sight as she attempts to eat. The general chatter of the room means she can’t hear but Rachel stares and expects her to stare right back anyway, challenging her to tell the kids they’re wrong. She’s looking at the back of Beth’s head. It doesn’t turn.

“Did he break her heart?” Evie asks. “Sarah?”

Rachel’s chest constricts. She wills herself not to look to the front of the room, where Sarah sits with her friends.

“No,” Quinn says forcefully.

It would have come out of Rachel’s mouth the same way.

“What about Beth?” Marlow asks, leaning on her elbows so she can see around Clementine.

Rachel doesn’t even know who they’re asking; the general table, maybe. The older girls who have information and are soft enough right now to share it. This is how rumors start. But Rachel also doesn’t want to do anything to stop it. Not when the alternative is the worse half of the truth.

“Um,” Daniela says, looking to Beth.

Madeleine lifts her shoulders. Naomi makes an unsure face.

“I think this would count as gossip,” Rachel finally says, shifting Evie who’s using her as a cushion again. “Seeing as anything past this point is guesswork.”

“You’re right,” Madeleine says. She looks ashamed.

“None of you would be having this conversation if Sarah was here,” Raya says to the table, eyebrow raised. It’s the first thing she’s said all meal. Rachel gives her a small approving smile.

“Well it’s not like she talks to us,” Naomi tries to justify, and there are a few nods from the other girls but no one really backs her up.

A silence grows after that as if no one wants to place blame and they all go back to their meals, conversations building amongst themselves, content to leave it behind them. Even Rachel’s girls abandon post and start planning their game for quiet hour; something involving the bunk beds and everyone’s pillow.

Rachel works on her salad, eating around the tomato slices she thought she could handle and contemplating the strange position of the girls in relation to everything happening with the counselors. It makes sense that they’d reach for answers on whatever branch supplied them, being eleven and the oldest of the camp and still not trusted with any of the ‘adult’ business. They’re just trying to make sense of what no one will tell them. And they know. They have to know something’s been happening. They’re too smart to not have caught it.

They made cards; they pinned Sarah up to Paul, all on their own. They found reason for her to abandon them at every meal and it makes sense and Rachel sympathizes, she really does.

She wants Sarah to come back too.

Maybe even more than she wants to never have to see her again.

_I just want to know what all of it means, Sarah. I just want to make sense of it._

She lets the tomato bleed into the bowl anyway. The seeds gather and they look like eyes and Rachel stares back, unflinching. Everything soft and red.

 

* * *

 

Sarah spends quiet hour sitting in the grass, letting her girls braid weeds into her hair as they carry on conversations that, politely, don’t include her.

It’s a courtesy – and she’s aware she’s supposed to tell them she’s fine, give them anything to wipe the worried looks off their faces as they ramble on about the talent show and boys and the worlds they live in the rest of the year, hands tugging and twisting little pieces of her as they go, but she doesn’t open her mouth at all. Just sits. Just- just lets them.

They’ve been gentle with her all week, almost too-eagerly reversing the roles. But she’s still the adult here. And she’s still letting it go too far.

(She keeps thinking Rachel would call her on her shit. She doesn’t know Rachel at all.)

(She keeps thinking Beth would-

The problem is she keeps thinking Beth is something else entirely. Something she didn’t drag out of the lake, cold and slick. Something that didn’t come back like _this_.)

(As in: at all.)

Rachel doesn’t even leave the cabin. Her girls are quiet inside, and Sarah chooses to feel it as relief.

“He’s dying, though,” Sarah tunes in to hear Madeleine say, somewhere behind her head.

A handful of the girls have left Sarah’s hair to make jewellery out of paper and tape and little bits of foliage, spread out in the sun. They seem happy if she doesn’t let her own shit cloud the image.

“Who is?” she asks. She’s been quiet long enough for her voice to come out scratchy. Weak.

One clump of her hair stills.

“My grandpa,” Madeleine says. 

Sameera shifts into view, smiling with soft concern. She pats a tuft of Sarah’s knotted hair in the front and a leaf falls out but it doesn’t seem to be the object of her focus.

“He’s old,” Madeleine continues, and there’s movement again. “Just kind of, using up the last of his time, I guess. In our living room.”

“It’s sad,” Zohal says.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t really remember anything, so I think it’s a relief for him.” Madeleine makes a gentle _tut_ as Sarah’s hair slips from her grasp.

No one seems to know what to say to that. An oddly comfortable silence takes over as they use up the pile of weeds they’d scavenged and eventually lose interest, leaving Sarah with a head of knots and what feels to be the rough, spiky plants that hide in the grass. Maybe they were aiming for a crown; as far as she can tell it’s a fair amount of dirt and tangles.

She stretches out once they’ve left her alone, lying down in the grass, feeling little bits fall from her head and the coolness of the earth where her shirt’s pulled up in the back. The sky is completely clear today. A complete swatch of synthetic blue.

Maybe the universe planned it like this: a perfect, manufactured backdrop for Beth’s return, just to make it that much more jarring. She rubs her eyes and thinks about what Paul said, earlier, at the end of archery.

_The worst part is I think I blame her for it._

She gets it, though. Maybe it’s just that Beth’s been away long enough for the fear to have dissipated.

Twenty minutes later she’s walking her group to drama, picking plant life out of her hair and watching the kids walk ahead like they’ve all outgrown her. Even Quinn, her little guard dog, has her arm linked with Sophia’s and seems to be, for the moment, happy.

Sarah’s considering feeling sorry for herself that she left her kids and her kids decided they didn’t need her anymore when Raya drops behind the group to join her, no longer limping with her wound mostly healed.

“Hey,” Sarah says.

Raya gives her a quick smile and puts her hands in her pockets, making it clear she isn’t here to skip along beside her.

“No one else is gonna tell you,” she says, staring straight ahead, “but everyone’s been talking. And I thought you should know.”

A chill drains through Sarah’s body as she thinks first of Rachel, and then Beth, and then _how_.

“Talking about what?” she asks, calmer than she expects.

Raya glances upwards, at the sky, almost like she’s apologizing. “You and Paul. Mostly gossip, but, I mean, you’re not that subtle either.”

A week ago they’d be having this conversation with some sort of physical contact; a hand on an arm, little bumps into each other, _eye contact_. Out of every terrible thing Sarah’s done at camp this has to be the worst. She went and let them all know they’re not important to her anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and Raya shrugs. Then, mostly just to appease herself, adds, “it’s a bunch of grown up stuff.”

Raya finally looks at her, and she’s frowning.

“No it isn’t, Sarah. Not when we all know.”

There’s so much Sarah could say to that – _you know like a fifth of it, Paul doesn’t even matter, this isn’t why I disappeared_ – but it’s all shitty, and it’s all excuses, and it isn’t even about her and Paul anyway. She presses her knuckles against her lips.

“Look,” Raya says when it’s clear Sarah’s coming up with nothing, “I just told you so you could take care of it. I don’t want them to talk about you like that. It’s not fair.”

“Thanks,” Sarah says, sincere.

Raya shrugs again, clearly not wanting to make a big deal of this.

Sarah hates herself for making any one of her kids uncomfortable, too busy floundering in her own mess to notice its effects on those around her.

And then they’re at the rec hall and Raya leaves her to head in with the rest of the group, and Sarah realizes too late that they’re not the only cabin at this activity. She’s inside and the nine year-olds are grabbing spots on the benches with her own girls and in the corner Beth’s clutching tight to the edge of her sleeves.

 

* * *

 

Sarah takes off. It’s a gut-reaction, and she catches Naomi’s fallen face as she heads out the door and has it blaring through her mind as she runs all the way back to the cabin. _How could you_ , it says. _Again_.

She stands in the middle of her tiny room for a full five minutes, sweating. Lungs aching.

The mature response would be to return with her tail tucked between her legs, maybe play it off like she only had to get something and then sit in the same room as Beth and have to look at her and say something and not collapse. The least mature response would be to crawl back in bed and only return to get her kids.

She aims for a cowardly middle ground, grabbing her cell phone and jogging back to sit on the splintery steps outside the rec hall like it’s only the bad acting that’s taking place inside that she can’t stand to witness.

The door’s open anyway, to let in a breeze if the wind ever decides to pick up, so she can hear them running through a warm up game involving eggs and chickens. She can’t hear their disappointment in her, but she sure can picture it.

“Oh, did you finally get fired?” Felix says when she calls him, and she contemplates hanging up just for that.

“Nice to hear from you, too, Fe,” she bites.

Admittedly it is the middle of the day, so his joking about her reason for calling isn’t unfounded. Most of the time she’s calling him when he’s supposed to be asleep, and he’s hiding in his closet because it doesn’t share a wall with Mrs. S’s bedroom.

He’s probably on the couch right now, watching awful TV. Legs stretched out where she should be.  

“All right, so are we having a crisis? Or just your usual loneliness?” he asks. He’s sucking on something; a popsicle, likely. “S is out, by the way. Errands.”

She adjusts the phone at her ear and leans against the wooden rail, making herself as comfortable as she can in the heat. “Beth’s back,” she says.

“Shite. Sarah.” It hangs there, even through a slurp. 

If she was home right now they’d probably be fighting, too hot and cranky to do anything but jab at each other on the couch but still doing their best to be annoying. They never mean it. Mostly it’s just to see who’ll crack first.

“How’re you, like, holding up?” he asks.

“That’s a good question,” she says. She pulls half a dandelion out of her hair. “I don’t know.”

“Making stupid choices?”

“Of course.”

He snorts, and there’s a crinkling of plastic that tells her he’s unwrapping something. Another popsicle, she guesses. If there’s a box in the house S probably only bought it yesterday and he’ll finish them all today. Even the orange ones.

“I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil,” he says, around something in his mouth. She’s expecting something more, a spiteful _so I’m going to tell you it’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself_ or whatever, but he only adds, “I can’t tell if it’s better than Oprah or worse than Oprah.”

She finds herself smiling, a little. “But is it better than Rachael Ray?”

“Okay, obviously. But Oprah’s basically immortalized in my memories and reruns and then Dr. Phil is this _gift_ that keeps on giving so I’m… so very torn.” He exhales and it’s delightfully dramatic.

If she’d had to ask herself what she wanted out of calling him it probably would have been some variation of empty platitudes, telling her she’ll be fine or something else neither of them would believe, even though she knows that’s never what she gets from him. But of course, the real reason she called was for a distraction. And now she’s sitting in the hot sun trying to pit _Oprah’s Favorite Things_ against a good-old Dr. Phil callout session and she can almost forget why her chest is so tight.

“I think I have to place my vote for Dr. Phil,” she tells him, stretching out her legs in front of her so that her heels hit the bottom step.

She’s close to another anthill, this one small and unassuming despite its place on a well-worn path. There aren’t any ants around it though so maybe it’s just that it’s been forgotten and that’s how it’s managed to survive.

“Yeah,” Felix says. “You always have loved yourself a hot mess.”

They end the call five minutes later, after Mrs. S gets home and starts in on the state of the place and it’s better for Sarah to disappear than risk having to explain why she’s on the phone when she’s supposed to be working. They decide that Dr. Phil wins by a small margin, and that’s only because it’s too easy to buy into Oprah’s artificial hope.

And then she’s alone again and all she can hear are cicadas and the kids inside, laughing.

When she’s not talking to him, just going through her day without him around, she compiles these long lists of things she wants to say to him or questions to ask, and then he’s there and it’s like hearing his voice reminds her they aren’t the kind of people who do that. Crack themselves open before the other person spends hours trying to beat it out of them.

 _How did you figure out you’re gay_ , she might have asked.

_I think everything with Beth’s really messed me up._

Of course, then she’d have to follow through; give him the rest of it and have to lay it all out in front of herself. She’s never been good at honesty. She’s never been good at anything, really, other than finding the dumbest ways out of things.

She rests the side of her head against the post of the railing, sort of enjoying the scratch of splintered wood against her skin. It’s an indulgent moment of self-pity that ends with the squeal of someone stepping onto the tiny uncovered porch, and even without shifting in her position Sarah knows who it is. Because the kids are all inside and because this is what Sarah deserves.

Beth walks all the way down the steps like she’s considering leaving, and only at the last moment turns around to face Sarah. With the short distance between them they’re about matched for height. Out of kindness, Sarah decides, Beth doesn’t look her in the eye.

She’s… Sarah built her up in her head since breakfast, painting in deep bags under her eyes and waxy skin and a hundred other things to signify something actually happened. Standing in front of her with that hairpin _still_ hanging on Sarah has to confront that she looks, outside of the bandages and long sleeves, entirely normal.

Well, mostly normal. She’s been crying, and Sarah focuses on the dried tear tracks that disappear halfway down her cheeks.

“Hey, Sarah,” Beth says, quiet, like she can’t figure out how to bring up that the last time they saw each other Sarah was dragging her out of the lake.

“Beth,” Sarah says, and her voice is suddenly shot.

A series of questions bubble up inside her, hot and viscous and sticking in her throat. _Did you mean it? Did they help you? Has anything changed at all?_

Beth pulls on her sleeves and then crosses her arms, opening her mouth as if she might say something but just letting it stay. Her sleeves creep up again. She looks hot, hair damp against her forehead. Sarah wants to tell her she doesn’t have to wear a cardigan if she doesn’t want to but she knows it’s a lie. Her stomach coils.

“I’m sorry about the cards,” she ends up saying.

Beth shrugs. Her lips pull at the sides, slashing her face halfway between a smile and a grimace. Slow. Ghostly. “I figured it would go like this,” she says.

Sarah digs her fingers into her palm. “Like-”

“Well, it isn’t like they could tell them the truth,” Beth says, and she slips her hands into her pockets.

And then they’re both looking down, at the dirt. The anthill is undisturbed.

It isn’t until later when Sarah has her girls lined up to leave that she realizes Beth’s coming out there was probably to try to apologize. (Or, worse, to thank her or something in what could only have come from her dickbag parents.) She’s glad Beth chickened out; there isn’t anything she could have said to Beth’s _I’m sorry_ that would make it any less painful.

Beth gives her one last significant look before they move on to the next activity block, pinning her to the spot for an uncomfortable minute with such an empty expression.

It’s like she’s answering the question Sarah couldn’t find it in herself to ask.

_No, Sarah, nothing’s changed. It’s all exactly the same._

It chills Sarah to the bone.

 

* * *

 

Rachel’s sure she deserves it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to be standing in a forest with Sarah and Paul as their kids play the first of several active games the activity block promises. (Well, close to a forest. A balding forest. With enough grass to be deemed a safe playing field for whatever warlike games are to come.)

Paul seems to be genuinely enjoying it; outside of a soft glance to Sarah while the specialist gave instructions he’s been eagerly taking in the energy of everyone running around, screaming their little heads off in yet another game Rachel’s glad to never have been forced to play as a child. If she focuses on him she can almost pretend nothing happened with Beth, or with Sarah. That they’re just counselors pacing boundary lines between the trees.

It works for a while: watching her feet fall in the grass and mulch, breathing in the humid air as she ignores Sarah’s own worn path twenty feet away. The children edge up against them but never come close enough to need reminding, that they’re here to mark what’s out of bounds. Rachel listens to the shrieks and laughter and holds her arms wrapped tight around her middle.

They’re in the shade, at least. And when Sarah finally does drift over, halfway through the second game, Rachel’s had enough time to steel herself.

 _So last night_ , she expects.

_So, it’s happened twice now and…_

All Sarah does is stare at her for an unnervingly long time, eyes round and full of shame. Frozen to the spot.

It’s as if she’s running through it all in her head, their embarrassing trajectory, trying to piece together how it possibly could have happened so she can figure out the best way to bury it. In light of everything Rachel’s surprised to see her standing here at all, but then maybe this is the lesser of two evils. Rachel can’t imagine her looking Beth in the eye any time soon.

_I wouldn’t know what to do with her either, Sarah. It’s a terrible thing to have to face your dead._

Sarah jams her hands into her back pockets and Rachel has a flash of last night: Sarah’s shorts yanked down to her thighs, Rachel’s hand-

She smothers the thought.

Sarah advances like she isn’t moving at all, and then she’s three feet away and her face is pained as she stands beside Rachel and watches the kids race around beyond them. Like cockroaches, they scurry for safety. Away from outstretched arms.

It’s easy to feel big in this when Rachel’s conveniently ignoring that she vomited in the shower this morning, not entirely related to the alcohol. Without meaning to she finds herself adopting a defensive position as well and mirrors Sarah’s strange, stiff angle back to her. She immediately straightens up.

At her movement Sarah shifts uncomfortably and says, “Rachel, you’ve- you’re not a virgin, right?”

A laugh nearly spills out.

Rachel’s tremendously tempted to reply _no, not anymore_ just for the look it would put on Sarah’s face (she knows what she’s asking, she’s not an idiot) but fights the smirk and crosses her arms instead.

“Of course not,” she says coolly. “I went to public school.”

Sarah finally makes eye contact, and the stricken look gives way to stunned amusement as she catches on. Rachel lets a smile tug at her lips in response.

“Good,” Sarah says, and there’s a seriousness to it, but she’s smiling as well.

A second later they’re both laughing, trying to stifle it, in a moment that feels too gentle to be real. Five minutes ago Rachel was ready to flee and now- now she’s in a patch of mottled sunlight with Sarah, trying to keep the painful airiness in her chest related to the laughter and not the way the light hangs itself soft on Sarah’s face.

How quickly it collapses into burning.

She wants to make Sarah’s laugh come back; to wipe away the regret that’s now holding her mouth tight, eyes tired. She wants to take it all back. All of it.  Just erase herself until she isn’t a part of anyone’s summer and no one knows her name.

“It meant nothing,” Rachel says, her stomach spiraling into one great knot. “Last night. You know that, right?”

Sarah looks at her with relief. “Of course. As long as you’re okay with it.”

Sarah’s doing her best to make Rachel the girl in this, like it would be Rachel who let her heart get in the way. If it weren’t for Beth Rachel would put an end to it right away. But then if it weren’t for Beth they wouldn’t be here at all.

“Sarah, you really think you’re the first person I used to deal with my own shit?” It doesn’t sound like her own words at all, but Sarah seems all too eager to believe them.

“No, ‘course not.” Sarah’s hand leaves her pocket and heads to her hair, locating some sort of leaf in one of the tangles. She doesn’t seem that surprised to pull it out and Rachel tries not to roll her eyes. “I’m just glad we’re on the same page with this.”

“Well this isn’t something you have to worry about,” Rachel says, as if she could believe it too.

Sarah’s gratitude is cut short as Rachel turns on her heel, deciding now is as good a time as any to start manning the boundary line she was supposed to be enforcing and heads over to do so. She supposes Sarah’s still standing there, maybe even watching, but Rachel doesn’t turn around at all.

The point, she reminds herself, is that it really did mean nothing.

Otherwise-

No. She means exactly what she said.

 

* * *

 

It cools down in time for the campfire that night, allowing everyone to pull on sweatshirts and light jackets in what they all say is perfect for defending against mosquitoes but Rachel knows is also good for Beth. For a moment she’s like everyone else. And her eyes shine.

Rachel’s group sits a few logs over from Beth’s, close enough to have a clear view through the smoke but not for anyone to feel obligated to talk. Alison’s placed a nice buffer between them, anyway. It’s the first time she isn’t sitting right at Beth’s side and Rachel wonders if it’s because she still can’t look at her fully, eyes drifting down to her wrists when she thinks no one’s paying attention.

While they sing, Rachel thinks about her mother. What it would be like to have seen her, after, and not just her in a hospital bed with a tube down her throat as her organs fail, but see her standing and breathing and looking right back at Rachel with those awful dead eyes.

All she can conjure up is herself at eighteen, matching her mother for height and still feeling small. There wouldn’t be anything to say.

Alison watches Beth as they sing a song about a bear and Rachel watches the both of them until it feels too painful – until she has to turn her face and do something, _anything_ , with her hands to get rid of the tightness in her chest.

She’s making a bracelet that won’t be for Sarah this time. And Sarah sits alone in the dirt, her girls draped over the log behind her like they want no part of her.

 _I’m sorry_ , Rachel wants to say. _This is what happens when they think you don’t love them anymore. They outgrow you._

They’d take her back, Rachel’s sure, having spent enough meals with the eleven year-olds to understand the way their hearts work, but she’d need to give them something first. And all Sarah has to give these days is her guilt and anger over things the kids should never know about. So she’s stuck. She’s stuck and Rachel almost likes it this way – Sarah in the dirt where everyone can keep an eye on her but no one will touch her.

She sat with Delphine and Cosima again at dinner, understandably, as it’s as far away from Beth as she could get and even with their brief conversation earlier Rachel’s sure she won’t be hearing from Sarah any time soon. But neither Delphine nor Cosima will sit with Sarah now, letting her fester on her own as they sit dead center between their own twenty girls.

Like queens. And no one can touch them.

In another life that’d be Beth and Alison, surrounded by children who love them and never had to fear them. Rachel thinks it then looks to Paul. He stares back.

For a second. And then he’s watching the fire, and Rachel watches Beth, too.

“It looks different,” Sahar says, leaning into Rachel’s side to get a better glimpse at the stump of a bracelet.

 _Than what?_ Rachel should ask. “It’s a new pattern.”

It isn’t. She just changed it, deciding she could do it better to fit her purposes. She didn’t even need to talk to Madeleine first. It feels like growth. But then, hasn’t that been everything? Either that or complete regression. And really, they feel the same.

Sahar puts her head on Rachel’s shoulder, warm from the heat of the fire and her cat-eared sweatshirt. “I like it.”

“You like the colours?” Rachel asks, even though in the dusk they’re quickly fading to a soft grey. She chose them carefully. Navy blue, yellow, orange, purple. Nothing that holds meaning.

“Mhm,” Sahar says. The rest of the girls head up to grab marshmallows, but she stays. “It looks good.”

It will look good. Right now it’s only an inch long, the knots proving to be more time-consuming than Rachel had thought with this much thread. But it will serve its purpose. And it’s nice to feel like there’s something she can do.

On her log, Beth hugs her knees, staring straight through the fire to the other side. To Sarah.

(If Rachel had saved her mother-)

Alison brings both their groups up to the flames, girl by girl, to roast their marshmallows, as if Beth’s given up and let her take control of everything. Rachel imagines the conversation that led to this, the two of them on someone’s bed: Beth admitting she can’t do it anymore and Alison, stubbornly, taking that to mean this job and not _everything_.

No one should have let Beth come back to the place that took the last of her. Even now, it seems like such a horrible idea.

But people believe what they want to believe. And Rachel understands wanting to think brushing that close to death only to be yanked back didn’t just give her a better idea for next time.

“Why’s everyone so quiet tonight?” Raniyah asks near the end of the campfire, as they gather up their stuff.

She has the expression of a child who feels more than they know, her intuition prickling her skin long before she can put the pieces together. She has ash in her hair, somehow. Rachel decides to let both those things be.

“We’re all tired,” she says, smoothing down the front of her sweatshirt. “It’s been a long day.”

Raniyah accepts it because she wants to. Like Sarah accepts the cold hand Rachel extends, pulling her up from the dirt without a word.

They don’t have to acknowledge it ever again. Rachel promised her, and as she lets go, Sarah stepping backwards as she steadies herself, it feels like the right choice. It feels like something the person she always wanted to be would do: get too close and still not let it touch her.

 

* * *

 

It’s a promise to herself, heading out with her cigarettes for the first time since Sarah snatched them from her. She’s brave. She sits on the bench of a picnic table, back to the cabins. It’s a promise that there’s something Sarah can’t ruin.

In the dark and the pinprick stars she lets herself feel, momentarily, the smallness of all of it, thumb poised on the lighter and cigarette pinched between her lips, unlit. She never had to hesitate in the city. She never crept through a room of people who would care if they woke to her leaving, book in hand so she could feel like there was another reason for her needing to leave like this.

Like it’s ever been any different than Beth; like it’s different than Sarah, sneaking off night after night to lose herself.

She can’t see a _thing_ in the moonlight. Her book sits on the bench beside her, dirty. Curled at the corners. As if no one’s opened it in a long time.

( _You know, if your mother even read a_ page _… she’d…_ )

But there was no way of knowing. They kept telling themselves that.

And yet he bought the book all the same.

She trips the lighter, making sparks that catch, bringing flame to cigarette, inhaling sharp and quick to make it taste any less like Sarah’s mouth. Inadvertently she thinks of Sarah’s fingers and squeezes her thighs together. _Stupid_.

Sarah’s done it before. Sarah’s touched other girls, like- _that_ , like they were…

Sarah’s pressed her teeth against their necks. Like she’d do it in a second. And Rachel wanted her to, Rachel wanted to feel the sting of-

Nothing soft.

Nothing like the way Sarah held her, after.

She inhales too deep and coughs out a burned breath and brings the cigarette right back to her lips because she will be _damned_ if this is what does her in. This has always been _hers_. Her smoke to dip her clothes in; her lungs to darken; her one piece of ugliness that her father might finally see. But no – he couldn’t possibly. Not when he hasn’t looked her way in years.

(Other men did. Stripped her naked with their gaze. And she let them, because-)

(There’s always a first, isn’t there? Why not make it mean something?)

Her hands are shaking. She presses a palm flat on top of the book beside her, reveling in the coolness of the cover with how hot her skin has suddenly become. She can feel the slight breeze move hair against her neck but it feels like someone’s breath, like lips that drag, that become teeth, that promise to tear right through the skin and never…

She focuses on the end of her cigarette; watches the paper lick itself to ash. It’ll go out, soon. She’ll light another one. She won’t go back to bed when she knows exactly what she’ll dream about.

It feels like a ghost of her own – not Sarah, but what transpired between them, like some entity that lived twice and then fastened itself a noose. It’s warm. Solid. Her fingers dart dangerously close to the glowing ember, wondering, maybe, if it would feel the same. She tells herself she’s dreaming when the porch creaks. But.

“You should quit.”

She doesn’t turn around. It’s half burned out now, racing for the filter. She inhales. Exhales.

“Rachel.”

They were drunk, last night. That was the point.

She was thinking about that first boy, of course, and not Sarah’s lips, not that Sarah had just been with Tony, and then stopped for _her_ , not the sound of-

“Sarah,” she murmurs. Weak.

Her nails dig into her thigh and she wonders if the marks will match the ones Sarah left.

Sarah appears, in loose shorts and what’s left of a top. She’s cold; Rachel tries not to notice that she doesn’t sleep in a bra, but Sarah’s right in front of her, eyes dark, _concerned_ , and lowers herself to the bench beside her, taking the book in her own hands, taking the last of the breeze with her.

“You should quit,” Sarah repeats. She’s so close. Her hand comes to Rachel’s lips, pulling the cigarette away. It’s concern. She’s closer.

Rachel shuts her eyes, trying to abate the stirring heat low in her stomach. She can feel Sarah’s breath ghosting the curve of her jaw. Sarah inhales. Smoke encompasses them both.

“I can’t,” Rachel says.

Whimpers.

She wedges the side of her tongue between her molars, biting down hard.

Something hits the grass. _If you start a fire_ … she should warn, but there’s a grinding, and then Sarah shifts, and Rachel lets out a tiny gasp as the full weight of Sarah lowers into her lap, straddling her.

Her eyes open. Sarah has moonlight in her hair, her face in darkness. She’s frowning, carefully, as a hand comes up to Rachel’s cheek and drags a gentle knuckle down the side. Rachel can’t look away, and Sarah seems intent on looking everywhere _but_ her eyes – to her hair, her cheekbone, her lips.

“I told you it meant nothing,” Rachel finds herself saying, now, even as her hands drift up Sarah’s thighs.

She tries to keep them steady but she isn’t sure she’s the one doing the shaking.

Sarah opens her mouth, finally meeting Rachel’s gaze. She breathes in. “I know. But I-”

And Rachel wonders, briefly, if she’s about to hear Sarah say it, and then if she’s sure this isn’t a dream, even with the heat of Sarah pinning her down, bringing fingers to Rachel’s hair as she leans closer.

Her lips are soft; cautious.

Afraid.

Rachel wants it to hurt, but the fact that they both taste like cigarettes, that Sarah keeps them suspended in this one _delicate_ moment has Rachel turning her face with a lump in her throat. (Looks away a second too late – still catches the hurt, Sarah suddenly the fool and more unsure than Rachel’s ever seen her before.)

“Don’t,” Rachel says, and it comes out raspy, not at all harsh like she intends.

Sarah shifts her weight away slowly, like she’s afraid to stand up and afraid to stay straddling Rachel but doesn’t know which will make it worse. “Don’t what?” she asks. It’s tiny.

God. _Make it mean something_.

Rachel covers her mouth with her hand, trying to hide the tremble. It makes the decision for Sarah as she gets up in one quick, jerky motion and shoves a hand into her hair like that could stop every single emotion from playing out across her face. Even in the moonlight, even with just a shard of her angled enough to catch any of it.

Rachel suddenly wonders if she’s going to be sick again, spraying it across both their feet this time. She notices Sarah’s still holding the book and doesn’t know why it surprises her when she was sure she’d catch her letting go.

“What do you want?” Rachel asks and it’s sharp enough to cut, but it might just be that Sarah’s soft enough to let herself be cut.

Sarah lifts her shoulders. Her eyes are shining, and Rachel hates her for it.

“So leave me alone, then,” Rachel retorts.

She can’t gracefully swing her legs over the bench to turn herself around but she can twist her torso so that she no longer has to look at Sarah, which feels pointed enough to merit the footsteps she hears. But then Sarah stops right behind her and Rachel has to hate the breath that catches in her chest.

“It’s all so fucked up,” Sarah says, wetly, her voice cast into the thick of trees before them. “Beth and everything. All of it.”

“This,” Rachel says.

She says it evenly, but she still feels the brush of fingers against her back.

“I just wanted to kiss you,” Sarah lets out in what’s almost a whisper.

Rachel twists further, just to blame the sharp pain on that. “You did, Sarah. So.” _Leave me alone._

But she doesn’t say it, and Sarah steps closer, a hand finally curling around Rachel’s neck. _Do it_ , Rachel pleads, desperate. She tries to smother the ache. But Sarah won’t kill her. She turns her face instead, gentle. And Rachel blinks back tears.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Sarah mumbles. It feels clumsy, like how Sarah lowers herself onto the bench, legs half over Rachel’s but nowhere near as confident as before.

“Just tell me it doesn’t,” Rachel pleads.

“It doesn’t.”

Rachel accepts the kiss this time, letting a soft tongue slip through, like another question. There aren’t any answers to give. If she could she’d breathe her in like too much smoke, just enough to hurt, but Sarah tastes the salt of tears at the same time as Rachel and pulls away with a thumb to her cheek.

Sarah holds her face there, for a second. Just looks at her.

“I’m taking the book,” she says, and as Rachel glances down to Sarah’s other hand Sarah rises.

“Okay.”

Every last word, every secret, is splayed out in faded graphite between those pages. Rachel wants her to understand.

She still stares at the lighter, abandoned on the bench, and wonders how quickly the flame would take; how soon it would all be ash. Sarah holds the book to her chest and doesn’t give her the chance.

 

* * *

 

Sarah sits with Tony at breakfast. She tells herself _compromise_ , because Tony means Paul and a straight view to Beth, but it isn’t Rachel and it isn’t sandwiched between Delphine and Cosima, two people who deserve answers she can’t give them.

(She thought about it: what kind of bullshit she’d come up with. What lies they’d see right through.)

( _Sarah, we’re worried about you._ )

Tony’s the safest option. Even though he grabs her a banana; even though he tugs the book out from under her arm, whistling.

“Some deep shit,” he says, and two boys look up before grinning to each other.

She continues slicing the banana, because that’s the only way she’ll eat it in this company. “Yeah, well. Not mine.”

Anyone else would ask whose it is, then, but he just lifts it up to read the cover, eyebrows quirking into something a little more serious. She knows what he’s noticed. It’s why she’s had it tucked under her arm all morning, unable to crack it open.

“Sarah, are you…” He glances between her and the book, and the knife that’s now stilled in her hand.

Right there on the cover. Sarah wished she’d at least _looked_ at it before, because then she’d… She would at least have had an idea. Maybe. A clue.

“I just borrowed it,” she says, lifting a shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

At this he sneaks a look to Beth, as if her return has anything to do with it; like Sarah _really_ might have found herself on good enough terms with the girl to be borrowing books, especially ones of this nature. She wants to smack him upside the head. She spears a slice of banana instead, offering it to him. He takes it in his teeth and then nudges the book back towards her like it’s suddenly loaded.

 

**Albert Camus | The Myth of Sisyphus**

**There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide**

 

“So have you read it yet?” he asks in a quieter tone.

They have their backs to the wall, a full two seats away from Paul and far away from anyone who would really care about that answer. She shakes her head and doesn’t tell him she’s suddenly too scared to know. Because then… Even the thought of last night jabs a blade through her stomach.

He pulls a slice of banana off her plate and contemplatively pops it in his mouth.

She takes a sip of her coffee, burning her tongue.

“Would you let me know?” he says. “When you do?”

The book is back under her elbow, pinned tight to the table so it can’t get away. She tries not to think about Rachel reading that line to her, ages ago when they were different people. The darkness is something else entirely now.

“If you want, yeah.” She doesn’t tell him he won’t want to know, because he’s still looking at Beth.

And they’re still both sitting a couple feet from Paul, who can’t lift his head at all.

Tony eats exactly half the banana as she steals a piece of his toast and methodically tears it to bits, even remembering to bring it to her mouth every so often like her stomach isn’t in the process of turning everything to shards of glass. He doesn’t say another word about the book and neither of them mention Beth.

“You know, I’m glad you’re back with us,” he tells her as they’re stacking up their dirty dishes to send with one of the kids to the kitchen. “Even if… you know. It’s for other reasons.”

She holds onto her cup, deciding she needs another coffee to take with her.

He can’t think it’s about Paul anymore with her joining them at their table but he also doesn’t hint at knowing anything more, so maybe he’s content to just let it play out. It feels a lot less like using him when he’s okay with it. She wonders as he shifts his weight if she’s supposed to hug him.

“Well,” she says. And then she shrugs, because Rachel’s standing up now too, pointedly not looking back.

“I know,” he says, his smile sympathetic.

He reaches around her to grab a couple dirty napkins, instinctively mopping up a puddle of milk as he does so and then tossing them onto his tray with the rest of the trash.

“You guys do your bunk yet? Inspections today,” he reminds her, gaze shifting as Paul comes up from behind with a tray ready for the compost bin.

Sarah presses closer to the table to let him pass and tries to ignore the lingering cloud of body wash. “Uh, yeah. Not yet.”

She’d forgotten how strong it is in the mornings, when he’s just showered; for an instant it’s last summer and the smell churns her stomach for different reasons, and he turns back with a solemn look and she almost lets herself forget why.

Beth hasn’t even glanced in their direction, she wants to tell him. But she knows. She can still feel her: the cold weight of her, disturbing the air.

Paul passes again with the compost tray and before she can think about it she puts a hand on his arm, briefly, to let him know he’s not the only one who can’t breathe around her. He catches her eye and his chin lifts, and there isn’t anything to say to Tony who pretends he saw nothing anyway.

“Don’t forget your book,” he says a second later, as if it isn’t already tucked under her arm.

“Thanks,” she says. He nods.

They send the kids to the kitchen and take the trash to the bins and she skirts around the drinks cart, refilling her coffee so she can survive the rest of the morning, and he doesn’t leave her side until their groups split to head back to the cabins, with some reluctance.

“Just- take care of yourself,” he says as she hugs him, holding her tighter than she expected.

“I will,” she promises. “I am.”

But her girls are still looking at her like she’s a stranger and she’s still holding the book close to her chest and even as she finally turns around to head down the path his eyes are still on her like a hook in her back.

God, she owes so many apologies.

 

* * *

 

Sarah still has the book with her on the morning’s nature walk, slipped into her bag despite her temptation to take it out and hold it and continue to be too scared to read it. She’d felt so assured last night that this was how she’d make sense of everything but now the sun’s up and she’s trudging through the clammy forest with an eerily silent Cosima and she just feels… dense.

Like she should have known it’d be something like this; that maybe Rachel letting her take it was some kind of warning.

Her foot catches on a rock on the path and she kicks it off into the trees, exhaling.

“You okay?” Cosima asks. It’s tentative.

Sarah’s been jerking them around too, Cosima and Delphine, like they’re more things for her to bounce off of when she needs them, to cast aside when she’s done. She feels awful. She _keeps doing this_ , and god, she’s so sick of it. It’s no wonder she can’t keep a friend longer than a year.

“Yeah,” she says too quick, and tries to make her feet fall lightly for once, to not feel like she’s always putting such a dent in everything.

Cosima’s arm grazes hers, warm despite the cool morning, and Sarah shakes her head.

“No, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Cosima says, earnest, and her hand finds Sarah’s wrist. “Listen, things have been hard lately. Just- don’t try to handle it all on your own. That’s how…”

They can’t say it, with the kids partnered up all in front of them, but they’re both thinking about Beth.

Sarah eases her pace so she falls in step with Cosima, and some of the tension in her shoulders lessens like it was her own stubbornness that was making her feel shitty all along.

Cosima’s hand anchors them together as they walk and for a moment Sarah thinks about how easy it would be to just tell her everything, for the first thirty seconds where it would hang between them while Cosima struggled to find her words. And then- well.

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Sarah says. “I know.”

The specialist at the front of the long, scattered line stops to point out some nature-y thing of interest. The kids pass by it slowly like they know what she’s talking about, all of Sarah’s girls notably less enthused than their seven year-old partners. Sarah doesn’t even bother pretending to look as she and Cosima bring up the rear.

“At least we’re getting in some practice for the scavenger hunt,” Cosima says, releasing Sarah’s wrist so she can pull on the sweater she had tied around her waist.

The farther they get into the forest the less the warmth of the sun seems to reach them, even as it drips through the leaves like sheets of lace. Sarah’s grateful for the jeans she pulled on after breakfast. For the cold. Not at all because she swears she can still see marks where Rachel’s hands had been last night, staining her thighs.

“Oh, have you been paying attention?” Sarah asks, and smiles when Cosima shoots her a look.

“I meant with the terrain,” she says as she struggles with one of her buttons. “No, you know I’m not into fungus.”

There’s a comment there about Cosima’s hair that Sarah decides might be a little too mean so she resists, instead allowing some of the dread for tonight’s activity to creep in.

The kids will love it, of course, competing against the other cabins, but Sarah couldn’t come up with a worse punishment for herself. At least last year Angela brought some vodka in a water bottle to make it more interesting. But then the idea of being drunk around Rachel _again_ -

“I wish we could choose our teams,” Sarah mumbles, stepping wide over a snarled root.

Cosima glances over. “For the- is Rachel really that bad?”

“No,” Sarah says, a bit too fast, and then tries to avoid Cosima’s inquiring look. “There’s just other people I’d rather be with.”

In all honesty she’d rather be in bed, right now, and wishes she hadn’t downed her coffee before setting out because she can feel it pushing against her bladder despite none of the caffeine doing anything for her exhaustion. She rubs at her eye and can’t even muster up a reaction at seeing a smudge of ancient mascara now on her finger.

“Ooh, good look,” Cosima teases, nodding at the makeup.

Sarah rolls her eyes. “It’s called I’m tired and I hate nature.”

She makes a halfhearted attempt to wipe whatever raccoon mess is now situated under her eye before just rubbing the other one, deciding she might as well commit. Maybe it’ll hide her bags or something. Maybe Rachel will see it at lunch and stop being such a bitch.

Jesus. Last night.

The night before.

Last _week_. At some point she’s going to have to admit what it means and she can already feel a rash threatening to break out.

“So you’ve been spending a lot of time with Tony lately,” Cosima says right as Sarah’s wondering if she might be the right person to ask about all this.

Sarah’s foot catches on literally nothing and she stumbles for two giant steps before regaining her balance, grasping Cosima’s arm a little too hard.

“Uh, I guess, yeah,” she says.

The specialist stops again, at a moss-covered rock, and kids bump into each other as they crowd around it. Sarah catches Naomi’s eye as Naomi’s making what appears to be a snarky comment to Afsheen and it has them both looking mildly embarrassed, separating to go back to their seven year-olds but not before sneaking another glance at the specialist’s dorky shorts. Sarah’s heart aches for a minute, the specialist pleasantly oblivious.

“You’ve been like, sneaking off to see him,” Cosima continues, and Sarah turns back to her, trying to figure out where this is going. “He’s been bringing you lunch.”

“Yeah, but that’s…” Sarah shifts a shoulder, frowning.

She realizes as Cosima’s eyebrow rises what exactly is being implied.

“It’s not-” she starts right as Cosima says, “I mean, Sarah, you know he’s-”

And then Sarah cuts her off, annoyed. “What, trans? Paul’s best friend?”

“Whoa.” Cosima’s hands go up. “I was going to say _seeing someone_ , but by all means jump to conclusions. What the hell.”

Sarah deflates guiltily, pressing her teeth into her lip. Cosima’s still frowning and Sarah hates this defensiveness that’s cropped up inside her, like anything anyone says is the start of some big battle. S would have a few words for her if she was here.

She misses her. Fiercely.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

Cosima shrugs and glances up at the trees, shaking her head. “Now that you mention it, though, you do have a point about the Paul thing. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it but…”

“Yeah, Cos, it’s not Tony.” Sarah jams a hand in her back pocket, nearly tearing off a fingernail with the force. “He’s not the guy I’m… He’s just a good friend.”

“Oh,” Cosima says, rather mildly for someone who was so ready to accuse her of repeating last year’s mistakes.

Sarah realizes a moment too late that she left it wide open, though, the stupid crush thing, as Cosima’s expression shifts into something that’s supposed to appear non-threatening. To anyone that doesn’t know Cosima, Sarah guesses.

“So there’s-”

It’s some beautiful divine intervention that one of Cosima’s kids skips over at this moment, the lid off her water bottle and dripping water behind her.

“I think I broke it,” the kid says as she hands the lid to Cosima.

Sarah looks ahead to where Sameera’s now walking without a partner, happily chatting with Ava. The merging of the two groups was the specialist’s idea and as the woman continues to make everyone stop for the most ridiculous shite Sarah decides she doesn’t care to enforce any rules. Hell, the kids could run through the forest with their shoes off if that pleased them. It’s Friday.

Cosima twiddles with the lid for a few minutes, making sure to give Sarah a pointed look to let her know their conversation isn’t over.

“Wanna hear a riddle?” the kid asks.

Cosima frowns at the lid, turning it so she can see the underside, and her frown increases. “Sure, Sophie.”

“You’re driving a bus,” Sophie says, smiling and sort of skip-walking along now to either match their pace or to express her enthusiasm. “Six people get on the bus, two get off. The next stop, three people get on the bus and four get off.”

“I think you really might’ve broken it,” Cosima says, and Sophie makes a _who would’ve thought?_ face as she continues.

“Next stop- eight people get on, one gets off.”

The group stumbles to a halt at the base of some thick tree, apparently admiring rot now. Sarah takes out her own water bottle and wishes she’d thought to fill it with vodka as she drinks.

“So who’s the guy then?” Cosima asks Sarah while Sophie takes a breath.

Sophie taps Cosima’s arm with her open water bottle. “ _Hey._ Three people get on, six get off.”

“Mhm,” Cosima says. She pops the lid’s nozzle open and then closes it again.

“No one,” Sarah says.

Cosima directs her frown at Sarah.

Sophie frowns at them both. “Five people get on. Five get off.”

“That’s bull,” Cosima says, and her eyes widen until she realizes Sophie didn’t assume it was directed at her.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sarah tells her.

It’s probably the least effective thing she could say, but Cosima’s still fiddling with the lid, running a finger over the ridges inside, and Sophie’s still going, so it holds its own weight.

“One person gets on. Two people get off. What color are the bus driver’s eyes?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Cosima replies as she pulls out an obviously broken shard of plastic.

Sophie erupts into laughter. “ _You_ ’re driving a bus!”

Sarah snorts and Cosima finally pauses to properly put Sophie’s riddle together.

“Oh, hah, I get it,” she says, fixing Sophie with a smile. “So what color are my eyes then? Do you remember?”

Sophie’s laughter trickles to a stop as her head tilts. “Um,” she says, “brown?”

“Yup,” Sarah says with a grin. “Just like mud.”

Cosima elbows her in the side then hands Sophie her lid. “Definitely broken. We’ll see if you can get a new one at the tuck shop tomorrow.”

“Hmm,” Sophie says, still trying to cram the lid back on her water bottle. She gives Cosima one last smile, considering, then takes off running back to Sameera near the front of the line.

“She’s cute,” Sarah comments.

Cosima wipes her hands on her shorts, unamused. “She’s a pain in my ass. So, exactly like you.”

Sarah shrugs and then there’s a lag where Cosima stares at her, eyes sharp through the smudges on her glasses from god knows what, and Sarah fully expects the question to come out. (It’s a small gift that Cosima even has to pry, though, with how much Delphine knows at this point. Sarah should thank her when she can find it in herself to acknowledge it without imploding.)

Cosima swings her backpack around a shoulder instead and pulls out a granola bar, eventually adjusting her gaze to the trampled path in front of them, letting Sarah fester in her own wound a little longer.

“I meant that I’d rather be on your team, for the scavenger hunt,” Sarah says after a long enough silence has grown between them, giving Cosima a gentle bump. “That’s all I meant.”

“Yeah?” Cosima says with a fond smile.

Sarah can’t change her entire shitty personality overnight, but there are at least a few small things she can do to start to make up for it.

Return the smile, for instance. Act like she’s deserving of the fingers that tangle with hers.

Maybe, likely after throwing up, even tell her the truth.

 

* * *

 

Rachel spends her entire morning weaving, feeling too much like some peasant for her comfort but also driven by an increasing sense of urgency.

She hunches over the bracelet on the dock while the kids swim laps. She curls up on a bench at tennis, bracelet taped to her thigh. She finished one at breakfast and moved right on to another, needing, in her single-mindedness, to feel the solid burn of accomplishment.

Because Sarah has her book. And Sarah carries it everywhere, not even reading it.

 _My father filled it with grief, you have to understand_ , Rachel wants to tell her. She wants to sit down with her and drag her fingertip across his lines, slashing them right through the page.

_“He seeks his way amidst these ruins.” This wasn’t me, Sarah. This isn’t mine._

Each time she glances over and sees the book under Sarah’s arm her stomach churns, wishing she’d thought to at least tell her _something_ last night, if not prevent her from taking it entirely. She meant what she said weeks ago about Sarah understanding it. Now, her fear is that she was right.

Sarah finally opens it at lunch, when Rachel is, predictably, alone at her table with the third bracelet and Sarah leans into Tony at the back of the mess hall. Rachel tells herself if he takes one look at a single page she’ll head over there and drive a fork into his sweaty skin but he’s polite and eats his burger with his head down and Sarah needs him to be nothing more than furniture.

So Rachel tells herself her pain is at the book being open, then, in Sarah’s hands, and not how she rests against him.

She tries to think of the first few pages; what Sarah must be reading now, fingers cradling the spine in her own small moment of stillness. The introduction: Camus laying it all out, and Rachel’s father questioning him, pleading, later writing over his own words in forgiveness.

( _The worm is in the man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of experience to flight from life_.)

If only Sarah would look up, shifting the hair that hangs in her face. Rachel could know. Rachel could see the way the words hit her and follow along and maybe even apologize.

But Rachel _offered_ , she remembers. _If you ever want to borrow it, to read it.._.

Of course all of this was before Sarah pulled Beth from the lake, and proceeded to collapse in on herself. Rachel suddenly wonders if she’s any better than her father after all; if she isn’t just putting the book in the hands of her mother, expecting it to change the outcome.

Sarah closes the book a few minutes later, napkin in place of a bookmark, saying something to Tony before facing her untouched plate.

Rachel stops watching. It feels too much like begging.

The book makes another appearance at quiet hour, when Rachel finally relents and lets her girls go outside and Sarah is lying down in the grass, reading with determined contemplation. It looks no different than when it was in Rachel’s possession but she wonders if it’s possible the book’s changed, overnight, and what Sarah reads isn’t at all what was given to Rachel, meant to rationalize the incomprehensible.

She should ask; at least if it makes any sense.

She should say a lot of things.

She presses her fingertips into the screen door instead, smelling the touch of metal on her skin, like iron, and takes in how no one sits at the picnic table today. She wonders if muscle memory applies to places, too, and if she sat on the bench she’d feel Sarah’s lips on hers all over again.

But she shouldn’t _want_ to feel them. She shouldn’t be standing here, watching as if she’s paying attention to whatever her kids are doing, tucked between the trees. She’s hiding and she steels herself and heads outside, putting her hands into her pockets in a gesture that feels all too familiar until she realizes it’s Sarah’s. And then she curls her fingers around the bracelets in her pocket and commits.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Rachel says, standing over Sarah so she blots out the sun.

Sarah shifts the book and in the sudden shade her eyes are uncomfortably clear.

“Yeah, okay,” she says. She’s frowning.

“My girls know to find you if there’s a problem,” Rachel tells her, transferring her weight. She can see her shadow moving across Sarah’s torso: cutting it.

Sarah props herself up on an elbow and looks around to see where everyone is.

“Right,” she says.  

And then her head tilts, and she’s staring at Rachel as if waiting to see which one of them will crack first. Her lips aren’t swollen or cut but Rachel tells herself she sees evidence of last night in them anyway. The book moves in Sarah’s hand. Rachel follows its motion.

 _Just tell me_ , she very nearly says. _Put me out of my misery._

But then Sarah lies back down, flat. And the book returns to hide her face. And Rachel, dismissed, exhales slowly through her nose before letting herself walk away.

She heads into the forest, smiling at two of Sarah’s girls as she passes them in the trees and then letting the smile fall as soon as they’re behind her. It isn’t her normal path, but she remembers taking it once before, in the middle of the night, when Sarah had Beth’s blood soaked through her clothes and moved more like an echo than a girl.

She wonders what Sarah did with those clothes; the shirt was a rag at that point, but maybe she thought she could get it out of them. That Beth wouldn’t stain if she tried hard enough.

(After her mother-)

(It wasn’t blood, but she tried for hours to get the lipstick out of the grout. Maybe it was the last of her mother but she’ll never know for sure, with everyone trying to save her, who stepped on it. Who it really was that crushed it.)

She passes Paul and Tony’s cabin and instinctively holds her breath, as if the scent of them might drift all the way out to the forest and wrap its hands around her throat. The last time she saw that yard Paul was standing there in his boxers, cheek swelling. Sarah was in her arms. The boys are all racing through it now, diving into the cabins and exiting with shouts, their counselors nowhere to be seen.

She was running – not like the boys, no part of this was a game – when she was last along this curve of the path, leading away from the boys’ cabin. They cut through the forest and Sarah was a blur ahead of her, catching bits of moonlight until she disappeared. Rachel remembers her lungs burning; the relief of stopping, even with Sarah so ready to self-destruct.

She takes the full length of the path this time just to write over it. (To prolong it. She lingers, pretending to look at a scattering of tiny purple flowers.)

And then she sees the clearing up ahead: two picnic tables, a cabin mirroring itself. Yard completely empty. She expected… noise, at least. Evidence that children exist here. Not the dry earth coughing up grass where it can and two quiet bodies on the porch steps.

Alison sits directly behind Beth, one step above her. She has pins between her teeth and is methodically pinning up Beth’s wet hair, fingers moving in a gentle act that Rachel files away as love. Beth has her face to the sun. Eyes shut.

The trees whisper with a warm breeze as Rachel emerges, removing her hands from her pockets. Alison stills.

“Hi,” Rachel says. It’s an offering and Beth opens her eyes.

Alison pulls the pins from her teeth, mouth immediately hardening. “Hello, Rachel,” she says.

Rachel isn’t sure if she should be looking at Alison or Beth, instead staring at a fraction of railing that sits beside them, and Alison seems to consider leaving – to give Beth privacy, perhaps – before just sitting up straighter. Rachel’s secretly grateful. She needs someone to hold the moment in place.

Her gaze drifts down to Beth’s long sleeves (blue today, dark like the lake) and she remembers her reason for coming, reaching back into her pocket to procure the four bracelets. Each of them are an inch wide, knotted intricately; the same colors repeated in different order.

“Um,” she says, holding them out and then moving closer until her shoes edge up against the bottom step. “In case it gets too hot for long sleeves. When the bandages come off.”

Alison watches the exchange, bristling with Rachel as Beth’s fingers graze her palm. Rachel thinks back to the handshake; how sure she had been. That sense of completion. It doesn’t seem like the same hand at all.

“Thanks,” Beth says. It isn’t emotionless, but it isn’t any emotion Rachel can define.

Beth carefully drapes the bracelets over one of her sleeves, as if hanging wet winter socks on an old radiator. Alison’s hand comes down to touch the knotted end of a bracelet and then she sticks another pin in Beth’s slowly-forming bun.

Instinctively, Beth leans back against her leg.

“Rachel-” Her eyes are trained on Rachel like a field mouse and then a hawk, and she eases further into Alison. “Uh, thanks for the card.”

Rachel shifts and gives her a terse smile. “It was awful.”

Beth laughs. Alison’s eyes light up in surprise.

“Yeah, but I appreciate it,” Beth says, and she gathers up the bracelets and closes her fingers around them.

Alison pulls another pin out of the pile on her thigh and concentrates as she moves it into place, a hand cradling the side of Beth’s head, her eyes darting to Rachel before returning to Beth and her hair that smells achingly of citrus and mint.

“You know,” Rachel starts, when something tugs inside her to say say more. “Sarah’s very good at braiding. If you ever…”

Beth looks at her curiously for a second, and then nods.

Rachel expects Alison at least to take it as a threat, the way she holds Beth in place in front of her like they’ve been doing this all their lives. But then she looks tired. So tired. And her lips twitch into something like gratitude.

“She can’t make bracelets, though,” Alison comments, giving Rachel the faintest hint of a smile.

“No,” Rachel replies. “She can’t.”

“You’d think,” Beth says, and then her eyes are shut again, and she’s smiling like this is any other Friday afternoon and they’re all here enjoying the sunshine.

Rachel doesn’t know what to do but smile as well. Even if Beth can’t see it, and it’s mostly for herself.

Alison nearly has Beth’s bun finished as Rachel finally leaves, neither one of them seeming to mind her lingering in a silence that felt more comfortable than invasive. She doesn’t say a word and they don’t comment at all; just stay sitting like that on the porch, Alison’s fingers tucking the quiet into Beth’s hair like this was the plan all along.

Rachel feels lighter as she walks back. She can’t name it, but something inside her has stilled.

 

* * *

 

Everything smells like rain in the evening, static, despite the only clouds overhead stretched thin like pulled cotton. Rachel has her girls dress in jackets and long pants and they all apply bug spray (Marlow insists on spraying Rachel, too, out on the porch) before they’re set to head to the meeting field. She’s sure it won’t storm again but something inside her needs them to be prepared.

The camp is due at the field at eight o’clock, to let the teams plan their strategy and then receive the first clue. It’s strips of felt they’ll be looking for, tying the clues to their hiding spots, and each team is given their own color – to avoid collisions or interference from other cabins, as has happened in the past.

At the end of dinner, the director announced the colors. Rachel and Sarah have red.

“So,” Sarah says to Rachel, as they stand in the yard, waiting for the remaining kids to come out of the cabins. It’s chilly for the end of July; Sarah has a sweatshirt under her jacket and pulls the hood up over her hair.

Rachel wonders if pulling up her own hood would be an effective way of shutting her out. She sighs and calls for Evie again and Evie comes bumbling out, hair in her mouth, and Rachel leads her group to the path to get away from Sarah’s sphere of discomfort.

They don’t quite all walk together, Rachel moving quickly enough that some of her girls fall behind into Sarah’s group and Sarah’s fast walkers end up with Rachel, but by the time they arrive at the field they’re one clump of people who all are each as unsure about tonight’s events as the next.

It _seems_ fun, on the surface, to do a scavenger hunt after dinner, racing around to find clues and beat the boys. Rachel can see why a lot of the groups are excited but she also understands (and had Olivia dolefully explain in the cabin) that it will involve a great deal of running around camp and encountering bugs and plants with thorns and that she’s stuck doing it all with Sarah.

Who can barely look at her, as if Rachel’s the one who’s been sitting with Tony every meal.

Rachel _would_ , too. Maybe not Tony, but someone who was at another table. She would eagerly get away from this whole mess. But she can’t just leave the kids the way Sarah has.

They’re still eyeing her like she’ll disappear again tonight; that her uneasy shifting means she’s calculating the quickest exit or is just waiting for the first opportunity to slip off into the woods. Maybe their hesitance regarding tonight isn’t so much the scavenger hunt itself then – maybe they’re just wary at Sarah being here with them.

“We need a strategy,” Madeleine says when nearly all the cabins have scattered in clusters around the field, heads turning to look at the upper staff every so often as they wait to begin.

Madeleine’s words spur the girls to face her and then they find themselves in a rough circle, Rachel across from Sarah who has all but been shut out.

Beth and Alison’s team is blue. Rachel thinks about it for one second in the context of blood loss, of pale skin, and clears her mind. She thinks about the sky instead. A greying blue right now, the sun due to set in about an hour. They’ll all be running around in the dark. With glow sticks, the director said at dinner, but Rachel just expects chaos.

“I wish we had walkie-talkies,” Raniyah comments.

Madeleine nods at her like a CEO at a board meeting whose employee just relayed the week’s less-than-stellar numbers.

The girls mumble to each other. The Isabellas whisper something, then Isabella W. suggests they send out runners.

“The fastest ones. Like in relay races. They can bring the clue back to us so we waste less time.”

“We’ll switch off, of course,” Isabella C. says. “So we don’t get tired.”

“Some of us _are_ very slow,” Madeleine says authoritatively. She tries to suppress a glance at Evie but only manages to twist it to Quinn instead, who scowls in return.

“That sounds good,” Sarah says, from behind Afsheen, as if trying to join in.

Rachel can’t stand to look at her. She focuses on the groups in the distance, everyone somehow evenly spaced across the field as if the camp truly has been divided. It isn’t fair to the youngest campers, Rachel suddenly realizes, gaze settling on Delphine and Cosima standing with their kids near the upper staff. They should have mixed up the groups. They should have put Sarah as far away from Rachel as they could get.

Rachel would even work with Rudy, if it came to it. She looks over to see him leading his boys in jumping jacks, almost military. They’re elated, though, so whatever he’s doing to them is working.

Seth marches in between the two rows as if picking out the weakest ones. Their team color is black, and Rachel understands completely.

“We should split up,” Daniela proposes, sliding the zipper on her jacket up and down its track.

She doesn’t look at anyone but Madeleine but Rachel still feels it’s somehow a dig at Sarah, who’s stepped back even further. Madeleine considers it with a slight tilt of her head.

“Are there rules against that?” Rachel asks.

“No,” Madeleine says quickly, but her voice is still a contemplative tone. “Just- the whole team needs to be back here to finish. I’m not sure though.”

The kids seem divided, a few faces appalled by the idea. This is where Madeleine appears to be stuck.

It’s interesting, the way the group fell to a natural leader, everyone accepting her final word and eager to say something to please her. Out of all the kids it makes sense that it would be Madeleine, who understands more than the average eleven year-old what constitutes fairness and how to maintain the balance.

Rachel would like her, if she were in her cabin. She likes her even with surface glances.

Madeleine is the considerate, levelheaded girl Rachel always wanted to be.

(Instead, Rachel was sour. Twisted up rotten inside. Rachel could wear sweetness for a little while but it always left her tired, snapping at anyone who found her with her guard down. Even before her mother. Even before Canada.)

( _Do you recall how happy you used to be, as a little girl?_ her father once asked her, after she’d spent yet another Friday night reading in her room. She did not. It felt like something he’d gone back to pencil in, deciding this sounded better.)

“We’ll see if it comes to that,” Madeleine finally decides, not long before the director pulls out his megaphone.

Specialists come around with glow sticks, leaving the kids to snap the bracelets themselves. The director lays out the ground rules. Everyone glows slightly at the wrists. Counselors are handed envelopes containing the very first clue, and there’s a countdown until they can all open them at the same time.

Sarah hands the envelope straight to Rachel without even making eye contact.

One of her bracelets is leaking already.

Then the countdown reaches zero and Rachel’s tearing the envelope to chanting enthusiasm and the clue is passed to Madeleine, and they’re racing off into the woods before Rachel even has time to put the envelope in her pocket.

_You can find me at a rest, where the river flows its best._

Rachel only notices the tiny paper cut on the side of her thumb as they’re running up the mountains, along the path they should’ve taken on that hike all those weeks ago. It doesn’t sting.

Fittingly, their second clue is tied to one of the picnic tables.

 

* * *

 

It gets dark as they’re about halfway through the hunt, leaving Rachel to realize this means they’ll be pushing back lights out by at least an hour. (For the older kids. Delphine mentions as their groups collide by the rec hall that the youngest campers have a third of the amount of clues, theirs much easier to decipher, in order to even the playing field. It brings Rachel an odd sense of comfort to learn this.)  

The girls wane slightly in their energy with the setting sun, but as soon as the stars are out and the campground is dotted with small glowing bracelets their enthusiasm returns, having them race ahead as soon as they solve a clue. Which means: Rachel continues to get left behind with Sarah, who keeps her head down as if they don’t know each other at all.

Maybe it’s the darkness. Maybe it’s that they’re by the lake, and forty rings of green light blot the shoreline up ahead as the girls climb through brush.

There’s an owl somewhere. Rachel has her hood up, finally, and tells herself it’s a cocoon.

“About the book,” she says to Sarah.

They stop walking. Both of them at once right by the water. Sand merges with pine needles here, as if the shore couldn’t decide. Sarah turns her head almost in Rachel’s direction and they’re moving again.

“If you want it back, just tell me,” Sarah says. She’s looking ahead, to their girls. To the shapes of people the glowing suggests.

“It’s fine,” Rachel says. “I don’t. I just…”

She shifts her face in her hood, focusing on the whooshing sound it makes against her ear. And then on the feeling of fabric on her cheek. And then the crunch of forest under her tennis shoes, the sand thinning out until it can’t be felt at all.

Sarah kicks something a few feet over, into the water. It lands hard. A rock, maybe.

“You told me it was about Sisyphus,” Sarah says, finally. She sounds almost strained. As if she could cry. “ _Absurdism_. Jesus.”

“It is,” Rachel replies, but her chest is suddenly tight.

It covers many topics, she should say. It ties them all together: existence, desperation, the outcomes of giving in or letting go.

But she keeps thinking of the worst of it – the parts her father underlined several times or didn’t touch at all, unable to even comment. The parts she whispered to herself to see if they hurt any less out loud.

 _In a sense, in a melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it_.

(Her mother was _intelligent_ ; her mother could recite entire stories word for word. There wasn’t a lack of understanding. There wasn’t too much of… of life, for her to find overwhelming enough to want to leave behind. Rachel kept telling herself. Rachel kept trying to argue.)

“There are themes, Sarah,” she tries to explain, but Sarah quickens her pace.

“Doesn’t it make you feel…” Sarah starts to ask, and then she’s stopped again, parallel to a thick oak tree that hangs over the edge of the lake.

The dark is dense, in the forest. Thick. But the lake’s shimmering like it has something ethereal to offer. Rachel slams down on a wave of nausea.

“No,” she insists. It’s sharp.

Sarah turns, and when she looks at Rachel her eyes are round and fixed like prey staring into the mouth of a rifle.  

“You’ve read it so many times,” she says softly.

Rachel takes in a breath. “I don’t feel it anymore.”

There’s a cry of triumph from up ahead, and the specks of light travel away from the water as the girls head towards whatever clue they’re now chasing down. Rachel exhales, and then she and Sarah change their direction, moving into the heart of the forest.

They fall into step beside each other. Sarah has a glow spread around her wrist where the bracelet’s leaked; Rachel fights the urge to put her fingers on it.

For a while all there is is the sound of their feet crushing leaves, Sarah’s boots heavy while Rachel does her best to step light. The bug spray is working, as not a single mosquito attempts to penetrate Rachel’s fortress of poison. She tugs on the string of her hoodie. Gentle. She can see shadowy shapes and moonlight trickling through the canopy. Sarah’s breath is uneven. She tries not to notice.

“Are we ever going to talk about it?” Sarah asks, puncturing the silence, and Rachel surmises this is no longer about the book.

“We have nothing to talk about,” she assures her.

If she believes it, it can’t be a lie. If she doesn’t think about Sarah’s mouth it’s almost easy, to convince herself they’re two girls in a forest who haven’t tasted each other.

“You’re impossible,” Sarah says, but she whispers it.

In the distance, people are screaming. Happy.

“We’ve lost our kids,” Rachel says.

It’s entirely dark now – there’s no one else in the forest but them, their wrists bathed in a toxic green light, like handcuffs.

For a minute she lets herself pretend they’re completely lost themselves. She doesn’t know the woods, and there are wolves here waiting to eat them. She pictures herself standing over Sarah’s body. Pictures Sarah standing over hers.

Her throat aches and she will not cry.

“You’re fooling yourself,” Sarah mutters.

She brushes against something sharp on a branch and her jacket sleeve gets caught, pulling her a step behind. Rachel waits for her to yank herself free, keeping her head carefully still, not looking back at all.

“Keep saying it means nothing,” Sarah says. It sounds like she’s speaking to herself. “You’ll keep taking it anyway.”

“I won’t,” Rachel tells her, already feeling the drop in her stomach.

Maybe she’s the one who turns first. Or Sarah catches up, irritated. They’re at a tree and Rachel’s hood comes down, just enough for her to feel the cold air sucking the skin of her neck. A second later, Sarah’s mouth takes its place.

“God,” Sarah says, voice loaded with desperation.

She puts her lips on Rachel’s throat. Jaw. Kisses her, hard and demanding.

Rachel can feel something hot pouring through her body, down to the core. It’s an ache. And she presses herself into Sarah, wanting her thigh between her legs, wanting shamelessly to grind against it.

Sarah pulls Rachel’s hand onto her chest, curling their fingers tight.

She bites Rachel’s lip. At the taste of her own blood, Rachel lets out a whimper.

“Please,” Sarah murmurs, mouth at Rachel’s, her breath hot.

Rachel rolls her hips forward, trying to find friction. Her hand follows Sarah’s down as Sarah unbuttons her jeans, and then her fingers slip through the fabric of Sarah’s underwear, forcing the glow bracelet up Rachel’s arm until it’s pressed against Sarah’s stomach. Sarah’s _wet_ ; Rachel grinds harder against Sarah’s thigh, trying to find a rhythm to satisfy them both without losing her balance.

Sarah keeps her mouth close to Rachel’s, smothering any sound with her lips.

They’re in a forest – Rachel suddenly realizes what a terrible idea this is, with children running around everywhere, and yet she’s moving quicker, desperate to get them both off before she has to think about it.

“Rachel,” Sarah gasps out, on the edge. She shifts her thigh so Rachel can get a better angle, and Rachel wonders what Sarah’s mouth would feel like instead, nearly coming at the thought.

When she does, it’s right before Sarah, who accidentally sinks her teeth into Rachel’s neck to silence herself.

“Fuck,” Sarah says at her bite mark, and then echoes it with a soft groan as Rachel brings her hand up to lick off her fingers.

Rachel wants-

To be somewhere she can taste all of Sarah, for starters.

To have regrets.

“You nearly broke my wrist,” she says, pulling her hood back up with the hand that doesn’t currently feel like something snapped it at the joint.

Sarah cradles a hand around Rachel’s sore one, the bracelets emitting enough of a glow for the lingering wetness to be visible. Sarah’s touch is soft to the point of hurting, and Rachel wishes she hated it.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, quiet. Her eyes come up to Rachel’s. “If this is…”

“It’s a stress-reliever,” Rachel cuts in, deciding she can believe it. “We’re helping each other out.”

“Okay,” Sarah says, holding eye contact for a second longer, and then looking down to tug her jeans back into place.

“We should find our girls,” Rachel says.

Her legs are weak, but maybe they can run through the forest to give her an excuse. She adjusts one of her sleeves. Sarah’s leaking glow stick liquid has stained a bit of the fabric, she catches, like it’s trying to mark her for this.

“Rachel-”

But Sarah doesn’t continue, and when Rachel takes off in a jog, Sarah keeps the pace a few feet behind her as if she’s trying to pretend it’s behind them as well.

They find their girls ten minutes later; all the way out by the tennis courts, Sahar at the top of a fence untying a piece of felt. No one even seems to register that they’ve rejoined them and as the group marches forward Sarah disappears into the background so easily Rachel can almost ignore that every inch of her still smells like her.

She should feel sick to her stomach, but-

Horribly, in the dark, her wrist throbbing, she has never felt more satisfied.

(It’s a warning sign. And she doesn’t see it coming at all.)

 

 


	6. chapter 6, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Rachel learn about consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 6 was very quickly becoming a 50k+ word chapter before i even got to several parts so i made yet another "let's split this guy in two" decision. in my heart both parts are chapter 6, just with a pause between them. also part 1 being 36k words is already too much to begin with and i'm sorry for that and how long i took to get this done. life has been unkind. 
> 
> warnings: references to suicide/beth's attempt, vomit mention, nothing new.

 

* * *

 

 In the morning, early, Sarah brushes her hair.

And then she does the same for three of her girls, and she spends twenty minutes braiding, and after planting herself in front of the stretch of speckled mirrors she has makeup on, enough for Quinn to tell her she looks _less tired than usual_.

She wears a clean pair of shorts. A pair that Rachel has never even seen.

She takes her girls on a walk through the trees because there’s still a full hour until breakfast. It’s a Saturday, and in the unfiltered light of a small clearing Sarah sits everyone in a circle. Cross-legged in the dew.

“Tell me about your dreams,” she says.

It’s an olive branch. The circle looks inward, trying to decide.

Then Naomi offers, “I dreamt we won the scavenger hunt. But we were all vampires.”

Sarah has a lump in her throat, watching their sleep-soft faces take in the fresh air as they all try to remember. They lean on each other and Zohal has her blanket but none of them have asked why she got them up so early or why they’re here or why she wants to know.

“And the sun came up,” Naomi says quickly as Sameera starts to tell her dream, about her mom in their kitchen back home.

Sarah was never this trusting; not even at eleven. She would have sneered at an adult trying to pry information from her. She would have run the other way, no matter what awaited her there. This has always been her problem.

If she could go back, she’d tell herself to stay.

(For a minute, at least. Just long enough to see if she could.)

Ava dreamt about the water. Madeleine dreamt about her little brother, and things he brought for show-and-tell. Sophia had a long dream involving monsters and taxis and biscuits she had to keep eating, and she swears it wasn’t a nightmare. Sarah listens patiently to all of them; all the winding sentences, starting over as new pieces come to them. She sits for forty minutes as they share with her.

No one asks what she dreamt about, but it’s okay. She didn’t expect them to. Raya thanks her for the walk. Naomi holds her hand as they head back. If she’s careful, they might let her return to them.

She’s missed them. And she’d love to be the person they thought she was before she ruined it: wild and loving and _theirs_. Maybe she still sees it in their eyes. But only when they think she isn’t looking, and she knows that’s what she deserves.

“Whatever you want to do during quiet hour,” she vows. “I’ll make it happen.”

They’re clustered around the bunk beds, putting things back in order before breakfast. Pillows and sleeping bags and too many lone socks. They glance over.

“Anything?” Raya asks.

The group shifts. Sarah nods like this is all she has to convince them.

“Even if I have to steal like, hula hoops from the sports shed or something,” she says, smiling, relief inking her nerves as they start to smile back.

“We’ll hold you to it,” Madeleine says.

But they’re looking at Sarah like they really want her to come through for them, even after everything. She crosses a finger over her heart.

“We’ll think about it,” Raya says, firm.

A year ago Sarah wouldn’t have cared if they pulled away. She knew those girls well enough, loved them, braided all their hair, and in the mornings they teased her and she wound them up like it was why she existed. But she was leaving anyway, all the time. For Paul and then to forget Paul. And they didn’t turn their backs on her. They took what she gave; they accepted it because they thought that was all she had.

She doesn’t know why her girls this year see something more in her. She feels shittier, if that’s even possible, about all her decisions, and that’s not even why they’re upset.

 _What if I’m really just a terrible person,_ she wants to ask. _What if that’s it and you’re waiting for nothing._

But it’s the way they look at her: they won’t let her believe it.

So she sits with them at breakfast.

She has her hair brushed, not a single tangle hiding her face. She has her hands clean. She sits at the very end, and she stares down the whole long table. All the way to Rachel.

It’s a new day. This is what she tells herself.

“It’s a good day,” she says to Ava.

Nobody needs to believe it. But she wants them to hear her say it anyway.

“You have egg on your chin,” Ava replies, smiling.

Sarah wipes it on a napkin.

Rachel watches her movements, and maybe she’s looking for the book, but Sarah left it on her banged up side table because she’s choosing to move past it. She doesn’t have to get stuck on it.

 _The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves_ , Camus wrote. She thought about underlining it herself. She decided to ignore the next line, not wanting it to be true. _As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive_.

But.

She catches Rachel’s eye; it brightens, slightly, as if this means something.

Sarah’s realized she can put meaning into anything if she wants it to be there. So she can take meaning away as well. The smile Rachel gives is just that: a smile. Camus wasn’t talking about suicide. She doesn’t have to think about Beth, sitting like a tightly-wound spool of thread next to Alison’s glinting blade and yet not leaning at all.

It isn’t about survival, she decides. It’s about living. And so it’s about choosing.

She knows what she has to do ten minutes into breakfast. She knew what she had to do when she woke up, smelling Rachel in her hair. All through the shower where she scrubbed until she realized she could be gentle.

Rachel made a choice last night. Sarah is making hers today.

 

* * *

 

The morning’s main event is a two hour free swim with the water slide brought out of storage and bolted to one of the floating docks. Sarah wears a bathing suit thinking she might really do it, she might go into the lake and keep it together, but none of her girls ask her to and she ends up alone with their towels and bags as the sand eagerly soaks up the mid-morning sun.

Nearly everyone’s here – there was a secondary option of volleyball, for those who didn’t want to get wet, but it didn’t seem to garner much enthusiasm as it was announced and Sarah doesn’t blame them. (Nearly everyone’s here. She purposely doesn’t look for Rachel, not wanting to face this newest disappointment.)

After some time on a towel mindlessly watching bodies blot the horizon she pushes her sunglasses up into her hair and makes her way to the shoreline, where Cosima and Delphine are digging some intricate waterway with a handful of their kids.

It’s exactly the type of construction she’d expect from the only two people she knows who enjoy science and for a moment she stands back to take it in: Cosima’s legs stretched over Delphine’s and Delphine saying something to one of her girls in French, the two of them widening a canal with colorful plastic shovels, everyone happy in a way Sarah wants to get back.

Maybe the thing is she never had it at all.

And that’s why she isn’t surprised Rachel said what she did, taking off into the dark with such ease. She expected it. She knew Rachel would bury it someplace neither of them could reach because there isn’t a universe that exists in which Rachel could face the truth.

“You’re looking better this morning,” Cosima says as Sarah finally steps forward, a hand above her glasses so she can see in the sharp sun.

A few of the girls look up as well, smiling. The one with a smudge of sunscreen on her nose offers Sarah a shovel. Sarah takes it because she can’t figure out how to refuse.

“We’re digging trenches,” the girl says, grinning at Delphine.

Delphine smiles back and pats the sand next to her for Sarah to sit, shifting when she does so she can face her and somehow, gracefully, managing not to disturb Cosima’s legs in the process.

“Get enough sleep last night?” Delphine asks.

Sarah folds a leg under her so there’s less of a risk of her caving in one of the trenches. Delphine looks radiant today; Sarah half considers moving somewhere else so no one can look between them and compare, but Delphine gives Sarah’s hand an encouraging squeeze on her silence and Sarah lets her shoulders drop.

“Yeah, for once,” she says, to the canals.

Water’s flowing into them slowly, foaming in the sand. It makes her think of the beach at home – of her and Felix trying to balance stones like the towers of them by the dog run, letting them clack together as they fell because despite their best efforts they never could find the balancing point.

She halfheartedly scrapes the tip of the shovel across the wet sand, leaving a mark that just looks clawed.

“Did anyone go out last night?” she asks.

It wasn’t raining, so it would’ve been a good night for a fire. And she really could’ve used a drink after…

Her most recent mistake, in a long string of them. She is so fucking tired of this.

She’s so tired of Rachel trying to pretend it’s all some giant coincidence when Sarah saw the look in her eyes.

“I don’t think so,” Delphine says, and Cosima adds, “Everyone was pretty beat after the scavenger hunt.”

They both glance at her like they’re expecting her to freeze them out or whatever and she realizes how little she’s said to them since everything with Rachel started. It’s _worse_ than last summer – at least they knew what was happening, with Paul, even if she wouldn’t say it. Everyone did.

She woke up this morning knowing it had gone on too long, and now they’re sitting in front of her, sand-coated and faltering as she ineffectively stares back, expecting nothing of her because that’s all she’s ever given them. She wants to do better. She wants to look back at this and know she made the right choice. As in: not Rachel’s.

They’re sitting in the sand. No one’s burying anything; they’re carving out paths for the lake to bleed into the shore.

“I have to tell you guys something,” she says with a deep breath, focusing on the lacy cover-up that hangs bunched around Delphine’s waist.

The kids are still digging, maybe listening or maybe choosing to ignore her, but Cosima tells them to go find some pebbles and stuff to decorate the trenches and waits for them to reluctantly take off before turning back to Sarah.

“Yeah, go for it,” she says, soft, as Delphine nods.

 _Everyone’s_ on the beach this morning – Sarah hadn’t really taken it in until now, hyper aware of the clusters of bodies across the sand and the sheer amount of kids crowding the water not far enough away. She can feel Beth’s presence somewhere down the shore, last she checked doing something dry with the girl who never swims. Paul’s on a floating dock with Rudy and they’re tossing kids into the water, again and again, making them scream with laughter.

She doesn’t know where Rachel is but she can feel her too: this uncomfortable heat in the middle of her chest. It pulses like the locked jaw of something feral.

She grabs Delphine’s hand, blindly. Anchors herself.

“I think I let… I… uh, really fucked it up,” she says, a wave of needles washing through her. “Rachel and me…”

And then her chest heaves like it can’t figure out how to exhale, everything trapped inside her. This is the first time she’s had to say it out loud. She can’t even stand to hear it, and Delphine tugs on her hand a little in sympathy, frowning so delicately Sarah wants to cry.

“So this-” Delphine says carefully, eyes on Sarah like she could take off at any second, “more than a crush, then?”

Sarah stares at the plastic shovel in her hands; thinks only of ramming it into the sand and watching it snap. She can’t look at Cosima. She can’t bear to see what might be on her face.  

“Yeah,” she exhales, fractured. “It kinda-”

And then the lump in her throat takes over and she does her best to keep the shovel whole because it doesn’t belong to her, even though her eyes are threatening to spill over and everything in her is whispering _break_.

“Sarah,” Cosima murmurs, reaching out until her hand is on Sarah’s leg.

It isn’t anything close to what Sarah expected, the million times she thought about telling her – it’s too soft, too understanding, like she gets that Sarah’s sitting here on the verge of collapse over something she still can’t quite put into words, and Sarah’s… actually on the verge of collapse. In all her imaginary scenarios she never thought it would hurt like _this_.

There’s movement and then Cosima’s come over and has her arms around Sarah, kneeling behind her and all but crushing her in a sand-gritty hug.

“This is the worst,” Cosima says, at her ear, apologetic.

Sarah clings to the arm that’s tight against her chest and lets out a long breath. Everything rattles inside her.

“I should’ve told you guys,” she admits as Cosima loosens her grip.

They’re both beside her now, not at all the pillars of judgment she somehow convinced herself they’d be. Delphine shakes her head and Cosima’s hands come up in something quick and twisting.

“No, don’t even worry about it,” she says.

“You needed time,” Delphine tells her.

But she needed _them_. Even a week ago, she could’ve told them and stopped it all before Rachel looked her in the eye and lied. Even two days ago, when Sarah thought that lie was what she wanted, because there was no way she could handle it if it meant something.

She-

 _Jesus_.

“I think she might’ve…” She stops, and then shuts her eyes because it’s so ridiculous. And she didn’t even realize until right now. “Uh, broke my heart or something. I don’t know.”

The silence is too much and she presses her hands against her face, pushing at her cheeks, letting out the saddest little laugh as Cosima and Delphine finally come to.

“I think I have some vodka,” Cosima says, looking absolutely stricken when Sarah opens her eyes. “And not Smirnoff. We’ll drink tonight.”

Delphine’s nodding with her, the frown that of someone who’s three steps ahead in her mind, trying to put it all together. “I have some Fireball leftover. I know they were talking about a campfire but-”

Cosima make a face. “No, they’re all gonna be there, we want-”

“Somewhere private,” Delphine agrees. “Just the three of us.”

They aren’t pushing for details, or even looking at Sarah at this point, too busy coming up with a game plan to need her to hand over any more of her sad crap. She slumps against Cosima and tries to tell herself it’ll be easier now that she’s had to confess to it, but.

There’s Rachel on the horizon, stretched out on a floating dock. White bathing suit gleaming. One of the lifeguards makes her smile and Sarah’s chest slashes itself in two.

It’s worse. Because she _knows_.

And Rachel would rather drown in it than have to admit a thing. 

 

* * *

 

In what feels less like bravery and more like a foolish act of preservation, Sarah sits with her girls at lunch. Meaning: she sits on the same wobbly bench as Rachel and does her best not to notice the way Rachel seems to favor her one wrist.

Rachel wants to play, though. Like this is a game she can’t get enough of; like Sarah’s hungover again and Rachel has her Cheshire teeth and nails filed sharp to get to her through her thick skin. Sarah’s not even wearing a jacket this time. Rachel slides over slowly, lips curled in that sly smile.

If she asked about the book Sarah could hold her to it or if she mentioned the scavenger hunt Sarah could drive it through her like a stake but she _doesn’t_. Do any of it. She just- smiles.

Says hi.

Every muscle in Sarah’s body aches from holding their tension.

“You’re not going on the out-trip, are you,” Rachel all but purrs.

She either doesn’t notice Sarah’s clenched jaw or is getting off on it, like it’s some side effect of last night or something and Sarah isn’t gripping her fork so tight her knuckles are the sickening color of bone.

“Nope, staying here,” she says. Grimaces.

She could have sat with Cosima and Delphine but it’s their last full day with this group of kids and she was trying to be considerate, or self-sufficient, able to do her job after cracking herself open whether or not that meant having to see Rachel in the daylight.

But she didn’t think Rachel would be so… pleased. As if she won something last night, and knows exactly what the loss looks like in Sarah.

Quinn glances over with an expression she usually saves for Paul, maybe catching on to Sarah’s discomfort or just letting Rachel fill the place of her mother again in that way that always leaves her looking spiteful and slightly defeated.

 _It’s fine_ , Sarah tries to indicate with minimal movement. The tiniest shake of her head. A drop of her chin. Quinn cuts her bagel with a dull knife and Sarah lets it go.

Rachel is still beside her; long-limbed and assured, letting Sarah know she hasn’t figured it out at all.

“Doing the obstacle course?” Rachel asks with her coy little smile.

 _You’ve ruined it_ , Sarah wants to tell her. _You pressed too hard and your hands went through it._

“Paint exploration, sports field,” she says.

“With Beth,” Rachel realizes, and something in her lessens a little.

A few of the girls sit up straighter at hearing Beth’s name but Sarah is firm and doesn’t seek her out at all.

“No, she switched,” she says quietly, pressing the prongs of her fork into a pineapple slice. “With Paul.”

The fork goes in too easy – like flesh.

Somehow Sarah always goes back to Beth. She doesn’t look, but in her mind she sees the bandages.

“Oh,” Rachel says.

And they’re silent.

Rachel brought an orange with her that has been sitting on the table but her fingers find it now, nails of her good hand embedding themselves in the skin, digging until the peel comes up in a soft spray of citrus. She pushes hard; her nails go right through to the meat of it and juice leaks out the open wounds.

Sarah can only sympathize. Rachel curls her hands around it, and then a spiral of peel falls to the table without a sound.

“She’s…” Rachel starts, as if this is the middle of the night, the only time they’re ever brave enough to talk about it, and Sarah wishes she could see Rachel’s lips form Beth’s name.

Just once in the daylight. Just once when it would be a full truth, and she couldn’t take it back.

_If she hadn’t tried to kill herself you never would have come to me._

She wants it to be true. In a really sick way. She’d believe it if she said it out loud but the thing is Rachel would have made it over eventually anyway – and maybe it wouldn’t be this painful, the two of them always stepping around a pool of blood.

(She could kiss her in the daylight. She really could. Rachel would… That would be the end of it, but at least Sarah would have done it once. And she could live with herself.)

“She’s fine, Rachel,” she says brusquely. “It doesn’t matter. Just- It doesn’t matter.”

Someone’s head turns down the table and Sarah prays they haven’t put the pieces together.

Beth was the one who shattered it – Sarah keeps reminding herself, that Beth made that choice. Beth reached that edge. And leapt. If it made it any easier, Sarah would blame her until her hair went grey.

She had children to think of. She had children she… _left behind_ , seemingly uncaring that they’d wake to her absence and a pile of lies that never would explain why she was just erased from existence. They’d stop asking. They’d forget her. Sarah still can’t bring herself to really hate her for it.

And Beth’s girls don’t seem to hate her for coming back.

Not like- But Sarah’s don’t either; they just thought she’d be smarter than this. She _should_ have been. After Paul, after what she did to Beth, she should have been smart enough to figure out how to stick around. She should have been smart enough to scrub Rachel’s hands off her the moment they landed.

 _You’re no better than him_ , she thinks, frowning with what she knows reveals too much at the side of Rachel’s face.

Rachel catches it too quickly. Her brow pulls, slight, enough to ask that question.

Sarah should spit in her face.

“I know she’s fine,” Rachel finally says, and in her hands the orange falls apart into perfect segments. A pinwheel that bleeds across her palms. “That doesn’t mean I stopped- thinking about it. Her.”

The sun’s out, Sarah should remind her. It pours through the tall windows as dirty as the glass and runs its fingers over everything. Rachel’s cheeks. Her collarbone. The teeth marks she didn’t quite manage to bury under makeup. Dripping onto her hands, splayed open on the table. Orange untouched. Sarah can’t stand it, and she steals a wet segment from its sisters and crams it whole in her mouth.

It feels like chewing up her own words: too much pulp, strings that catch in her teeth. Sour like someone should have peeled it days ago.

“That’s shite,” she lashes.

Rachel’s eyebrows go up, soft before they’re condescending.

She closes her fingers over the orange and squeezes painfully until it’s all a pulverized mess.

“So it is,” she says. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”

A trite _go fuck yourself_ is on Sarah’s tongue before she can remind herself they’re at a table full of kids, whose attention all seems to be on what’s left of the orange and its reflection in Sarah and Rachel’s eyes.

Sarah hopes she looks feral. For a moment.

And then she exhales, and swears she really does feel nothing.

“It’s over,” she says, shifting until she can’t see Rachel at all. “Just so you know.”

Her girls all busy themselves with their food as her head turns in their direction but she’s grateful for it. Any reaction at all would pull the tears from her eyes. And she refuses to back down.

“Oh,” Rachel says, small.

And then, “Okay.”

It does nothing for the searing pain in Sarah’s chest. But it feels like what she’s supposed to do, and that has to be enough.

 

* * *

 

The part that stings the most, Sarah thinks, is that Rachel tries to disappear first this time. (She has to come back, of course. She has no one to hide her. There’s nowhere to go. Sarah has realized how small the camp truly is and it’s suffocating.)

Rachel takes her girls somewhere else for quiet hour, unaware that Sarah had already planned to do the same. There’s no one at their cabin. The small mercy is that they go in separate directions and Sarah has a full hour where she doesn’t have to think about her.

(Theoretically, but- well, Sarah can work with that. If this is what she does with her denial then it might be okay.)

Sarah’s kids ask to play with her. That’s their request. They spent the morning thinking about it, they said, Raya relaying the message with Daniela at her side, and they want Sarah to be a part of their game.

“Tag,” Daniela says. “At the tennis courts.”

It’s a test. To see if she’ll break the rules for them this time instead of only ever for herself. (And of course she will, without a second thought.) It’s contained – they’re fenced in, nets down the middles, enough space to run but still something there to catch them. Fairly, Sarah’s It first. Because they need to know. That she will catch them.

She stays It for longer than the rules would deem fair, but it’s her idea; she doesn’t stop until she’s caught every single last one of them – caught them wide in her arms, swooping them into hugs as they all break and laugh and stumble to a stop as she does. She twirls them all around, laughing bigger than she has all summer.

She loves them. Enough to let them all chase her at once, catching her with ten pairs of arms and taking her down into a full bony knot on the clay court.

She’s all the way at the bottom, underneath everyone.

Quinn’s face is near hers, somehow, and amidst the laughter of the pile she stares with solemn eyes before bringing up a sweaty palm to brush Sarah’s hair out of her face.

“Don’t go again,” Sarah thinks she hears her whisper, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

Sarah’s arms are pinned under her somewhere. Something sits heavy on her chest. All she can do is lift her head, bringing it a little closer.

Quinn touches her face again. Fingers on her lips, leaving behind a smudge of dust that Sarah tastes even after they all roll off and haul her to her feet; chalky and ashen and full of grit.

Sarah promised them – anything they wanted, she’d make it happen. She reminds them. They want to chase her for another ten minutes, running around and around the courts, bouncing off the chain link fence and the sagging nets and each other, grabbing for hair and hands and shirts and falling more times than Sarah can count. Knees are bleeding but they don’t care at all.

It puts a lump in her throat. That they can ever feel this free, and they want her to feel it with them.

Her tank top is nearly soaked through by the time they let her rest, let her flop down in the prickly grass as their game shifts into something a little slower but with just as much movement. Her eyes hurt trying to watch them from her awkward vantage point so she looks up at the sky instead, content to listen.

Her heart’s still racing, trying to match the pace at which her lungs heave. She wills everything to slow down. If just so she can make shapes of the clouds without it all grooved by panic.

A puddle. A gaping wound. A long silvery stretch of scar, apologetic against the blue.

Something crunches gravel and dirt behind her head. Sneakers.

“Sarah,” a voice says. Shapeless, like the edges cracked.

It isn’t Rachel. Sarah shuts her eyes as Beth carefully lowers herself to sit beside her and then the only light is the one she imagines behind her eyelids.

“I-” Beth speaks like the wind keeps snatching her words as soon as she says them, but there isn’t a breeze at all today.

So maybe she’s throwing them up at the sky; hoping they stick, but they fall every time like a kite that just can’t catch.

Sarah could keep her eyes shut indefinitely. Then she wouldn’t have to see her at all, and maybe whatever Beth is trying to say would just disappear because Sarah wouldn’t spot the shape of it on her lips and have to sear it into her mind forever. She could stay lying down, and Beth could stay sitting like the earth might collapse underneath her any second now.

It would be fine. It would be fine.

Sarah rolls, and then she sits up and Beth has her hair down.

“You’re, uh…” Beth’s hand rises, sleeve slipping, something dark crusting the underside of a bandage. She’s pointing at Sarah’s top. “Covered in dirt.”

But she doesn’t reach out to brush it off, as if making contact would yank them back to that night in the lake. The moonlight and how quiet it all was, until Sarah realized what exactly was staining the water.

Her stomach hurls itself upwards at the memory. Boots squelching. Beth slick and heavy in her arms.

“It’s fine,” she says, hoarse.

Beth’s lips part and then press together too quick, clamping down on _something_. If it’s an apology Sarah will run.

But her girls are still playing. Every time they laugh they sound so young, and beautiful, and Sarah expects to look over to see them turn their backs on her. Every time.

Beth lets out a soft sound. Not a whisper, but something close. A tiny pep talk, maybe.

“Rachel said you’re good at braids,” she mumbles, eyes fixed on her precariously crossed legs. They have dirt on them too, although Sarah doesn’t comment. “But that’s not. Um.”

Her shoulders curl as if she’s two seconds away from disappearing into a seed-like shape and slipping deep into the earth and Sarah thinks of graves and bites her tongue and thinks of growth and can’t find it anywhere. Not in the way Beth sits like she isn’t here at all, hair down in a curtain that seems like she really was trying.

“Do you… want me to?” Sarah asks carefully.

She catches sight of the streaked grime on her hands and wipes them on her shorts, just in case.

Beth’s head shifts a little. Not a nod or a shake, but as if her spine is finally letting go, just a bit. Her gaze creeps across the weeds that eat the edge of the court. To Sarah’s boots, and then up, slightly, to the patchy grass just in front of Sarah.

“I could,” Sarah says. She offers it, her hands soft.

“No, it’s fine,” Beth says, and then she reaches up and wipes her face, and Sarah notices more tearstains on her cheeks that she can’t quite seem to rub off. Even as she pulls at the skin and lets it redden.

Sarah puts her palms down on the ground, and shifts her weight until she’s turned to Beth, positioned like she could easily start braiding at any moment despite everything in her threatening to melt away to the bone if any part of her touches Beth again.

Beth isn’t acid. She needs to remind herself.

Beth isn’t even really back.

If she thinks about it, it’s the same wavering Beth she conjured up at the foot of her bed, half dreaming so she could hear what she wanted. This isn’t any different. Beth’s here because Sarah wants someone to look to her for forgiveness.

But then Beth turns as well, and the sharp, shining eyes that meet hers are anything but imagined.

“I need to know,” she says, more solid than Sarah could think to expect.

Her torso heaves as she inhales – the sleeves shift; the bandages appear and are tucked away again. It’s blood, dried and sticking.

 _If it keeps bleeding you should see about it_ , Sarah wants to say, but like everything else this isn’t her place.

She nods to let Beth continue.

“Just-” Beth shrugs, and the breath that comes with the quick fall of her shoulders is frayed. “Why’d you pull me out?”

If Sarah dreamt it up, it wouldn’t feel at all like the fire that starts at her feet and promptly devours her entire body. She could- _breathe_ , for one. Look at Beth without the small hitching sound that falls out.

“I don’t know,” she says, awful and wet and slipping through her fingers. “Because you let me. Because it- was the right thing to do, I guess.”

“That’s it,” Beth asks.

She looks amazed. Horrified. It’s the most Sarah’s ever seen on her face at once, cutting right through the fog and pain for a sickly minute. Her hands cover her cheeks again, rubbing. She shakes her head.

“That’s it,” Beth repeats. It’s a ghost of itself.

It clangs around in Sarah’s cave of a chest, an echo.

 _Why’d you do it where you knew I’d find you_ , Sarah almost asks.

But her kids are still laughing on the other side of the tall chain link fence.  Beth’s fingers cover her eyes. Then they drift down, until they rest against her collarbone.

Sarah still remembers the feel of it as her grip worked itself loose and tried to catch on anything, anywhere, to keep them moving. To get them somewhere that would signify they stood a chance of surviving.

She really doesn’t know why she did it. She has no idea.

She looks to her kids again, where they’ve formed a long chain themselves. They all move as one and their targets are invisible and she thinks she still sees them get them. All those make-believe kids they pretend to take whole.

“Ali said-” Beth starts, and then Sarah looks over and Beth has her teeth pressed into her lip. “It doesn’t matter, actually.”

Her hair has curled in tiny wisps at the edge of her face, slick with sweat. Everything else still hangs loose and too thick and Sarah wonders if this is why she always wears it up. If it feels too much like a trap otherwise, hands around her neck, pinning her to a wall and still saying _I love you I love you Sarah why do you do this to me_ and Sarah knows it isn’t Beth’s shite at all and she hates that she always wants to see her problems in everyone else.

She presses her arm across her eyes, knowingly smudging her makeup so nothing wet will seep out without her consent.

Beth has Paul. Her own awful reasons for running.

Sarah had- not a single person who loved her in a way that didn’t leave a mark, and she was supposed to… forget it? Move on?

She isn’t crying. Beth looks at her but she isn’t crying, heel of her hand against her eye like that’s stopping it.

“Sarah,” Beth says, but it’s as helpless as Sarah feels.

Sarah shakes her head and a second later she’s pushed it all down inside her. “It’s- fine, fuck, it’s the heat. I’m.”

“Right,” Beth says as she nods, face yet another emotion entirely, and Sarah wonders if she’s allowed to hate her for feeling so many things that can’t be put into words.

There’s so much. That Sarah can’t make sense of.

Why that night. Why there. If it was Paul, or Alison, or Sarah, or-

If it was a thing at all, or just something long-building that had to come to an end.

“Why don’t you-” Sarah says, shifting herself closer. Beth doesn’t move even as she tenses, and maybe that’s enough to take note of. That she tries. “Let me braid your hair. Beth. Let me…”

Beth’s eyes cycle through something close to forgiveness then a gentle plea then something else unidentifiable and heartbreaking and she inches back until Sarah could almost hold all of her, she’s that close. Yet still with the gap between them. Her head turns so Sarah can’t see her face anymore.

“It’s dirty,” Beth says softly. “I washed it yesterday but it- it’s dirty.”

The apology that isn’t. The closest Sarah can stand to get without breaking, and her fingers move forward and Beth’s hair is so warm. Hot, even. Hotter against her scalp and Sarah lets a wave of sadness wash through her before continuing.

Beth stays absolutely still. As if this is her penance. _I’m sorry_.

She doesn’t say it.

Sarah doesn’t let her say it. She runs her fingertips over Beth’s head and doesn’t think about what’s inside: whatever broke her down into this. It’s too much to consider, and Sarah separates the hair into sections instead, letting muscle memory take over as she focuses on the sound of Beth’s breathing.

Too soft. She’s terrified.

 _You don’t remember the last time I was this close_ , Sarah thinks. How could she. She was almost… how could she.

“Where does Alison think you are?” she asks when the braid’s forming, everything a little sweaty, but she can’t compare the moisture on her fingertips to blood. It doesn’t come close. Sarah won’t forget that feeling for the rest of her life.

Beth knows what Sarah’s asking, anyway. There’s no way Alison let her wander off alone, even if she’s supposed to be better.

“With Paul,” Beth says with a hint of wryness, mostly just empty.

Sarah’s fingers stiffen but she forces them to keep going. A section slips. She grabs it before she loses it.

“You know, uh, last summer,” she says as it clutches her chest, the whole damn year inside her with teeth.

Beth’s shoulders lift. A shrug, maybe. Or the tiniest tired laugh.

“Sarah,” she says. “I think we can say we’re even.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says quickly.

If it’s a joke she doesn’t want to smile but it feels like the only way Beth can deliver it without them both being different people, and Beth lets the silence spread and Sarah shifts under the guise of getting a better angle for the back of the braid but really just to press her leg against her. For the contact.

To feel her whole, and dry, and her heart beating like it’s still willing to keep her alive. Nothing like the last time she held her.

She leans forward just a little, until her elbow rests against Beth’s shoulder blade, radiating heat through the grey cardigan but a heat that hits Sarah in a way that settles something inside her – that this body can hold itself upright, even after she lets go.

Maybe Beth notices the hand Sarah ghosts down her spine once the braid is finished. She doesn’t say a word.

And Sarah doesn’t say anything when Beth stays, the two of them watching Sarah’s girls through the fence as they sit side by side all the way to the gong. It’s the closest Sarah’s come to stillness in a long time.

 

* * *

 

Rachel takes a page out of Sarah’s book and slips into the mess hall before her afternoon activity, spending far too long trying to decide at the drinks cart until making herself coffee because today isn’t a day to be thinking of home. Not with a wrist that throbs, still, like someone grabbed it too hard in a moment of anger. She pours her sugar carefully.

One of the cooks eyes her through the glass counter; Rachel drops her shoulders and the woman looks away. Still, she finds herself wanting to apologize.

She broke a rule. It shouldn’t, but it blooms something like guilt under her skin as she slinks out the door.

The coffee is too hot to drink even as she arrives at the rec hall and she isn’t sure what to expect of an afternoon of dance games when not a single one of her girls signed up for it (the out-trip was too enticing, she supposes, far enough away from the place that seems to be pulling the light from their eyes) but she plants herself on a bench anyway as the specialist sets up mats and hoops and tries not to think about Beth.

It seems impossible to come back to this bench and not think of the rain or the way Beth let her knee touch Rachel’s, almost intentionally seeking her out, like there was something about the contact she was looking for in particular.

She shook Rachel’s hand with such conviction. If Rachel goes home and forgets everything else, this will stick. The pale knuckles. The tightness of her grasp. (She should but doesn’t let it bleed into desperation. There is no one pulling anyone off the edge of a cliff. There is no cliff to speak of.)

“The kids aren’t due for another five minutes,” the specialist says as she drops a hoop near Rachel, her hair somehow already slipping out of the ponytail and a pink tinge to her cheeks. Rachel’s tongue stings with pity. “You can hang out, if you want. I think there’s some pretzels kicking around.”

She looks to the stage area like she could actually locate the untrustworthy food in the mess of everything and Rachel sighs and makes a show of turning her head as well, wishing she’d thought to linger a little longer. Anywhere. Just not here.

“Do you know who’s doing this with you?” the specialist asks when it’s clear Rachel’s not budging and the pretzels won’t reveal themselves.

“Art,” Rachel says. She presses her thumb into the lid of her coffee, popping down the plastic.

A look passes over the specialist’s face as if she’s realizing she was sent no one with any dance skills whatsoever to assist her today. She nods slowly, and then she kicks a hoop a little to the left, surveying the islands placed on the floor like they might hold some answers.

It isn’t as if Rachel’s never played freeze dance before or experienced the type of banal games everyone else seemed to enjoy in elementary school gym class. She can manage a CD player. But she also isn’t about to offer up any more information to the specialist, because watching her try to keep her expression pleasant and not reveal how little she values Rachel might actually be the highlight of Rachel’s Saturday.

(Depressingly. She thought- it didn’t matter, but she thought in light of last night…)

(She’s so stupid sometimes. She really is.)

Art comes in a few minutes later and kids follow, the fifteen who signed up for this activity block all taking one look at Rachel and Art and immediately placing themselves in front of the specialist for instructions. The specialist even nearly manages to keep a neutral expression as the lines are drawn.

Art raises his eyebrows quite comically then joins Rachel on the bench, taking up the space that used to be Beth’s, filling it with a warmth Rachel hadn’t really expected.

He smiles at her. She blinks and glances down and smiles back.

“Not much of a dancer?” he asks, easy.

The music starts up and it’s apparent not a single one of these children are dancers either, the rhythm eluding them even as the specialist leads them in some simple warm-ups.

“If anyone asks, no,” Rachel replies, enjoying the laugh it earns.

Art grins and sits back against the wall and rests his hands on his knees, so quickly allowing himself comfort that Rachel wants to ask how. She tries to relax her spine, just a little, but it only stiffens more. Serves her right, maybe. For trying so hard. She brings her coffee to her lips instead.

“Same here,” he says with the tail end of a chuckle. “Not until they pay me the specialist rate.”

This is the first time Rachel can recall ever speaking to him – and with everyone else she’d be swallowing back panic, needing to keep everything in check so she can control what’s said and what isn’t and what the other person might think of her. She’s so used to the tightness of her tongue that she isn’t sure what to do without it.

She smiles at him again, finding herself making eye contact willingly.

He’s a happy person. Or he’s a person who wants to be happy.

She’s sure most people are; it’s still hitting her as something novel, something to want to pick apart until she can understand why. He has that gentle gruffness of Tony. He has the shoulders of someone who’s had to square them one too many times, and despite that she can see a shine to his eyes that pierces her chest in its geniality.

As if he doesn’t mind being here, with her, either.

(For a terrible moment she wants to tell him everything. He would listen. She’s sure of that. She just didn’t know she wanted someone to.)

She sips at her coffee. It’s lukewarm now and tastes the same and she jerks her attention back to the group, refusing to let it remind her of Sarah.

The kids have moved on to using the hoops and mats as varying levels of safe spaces for whatever game the specialist is running through, going slow, letting them try it out with no consequences before playing for elimination. They all seem happy too. She recognizes a few of them from Beth’s cabin, a few from Tony’s. There isn’t anyone who would know her name.

“You don’t say much, do you,” Art says, and Rachel’s so taken aback by the comment that she only manages to turn her head. He’s still smiling, amused. “Just one of those people who keeps it to herself.”

She _is_ , so she doesn’t know why she feels the need to prove it.

Her posture straightens up into something more elusive anyhow. He isn’t like a single man she had to entertain for her father’s benefit but her body still knows the rules and slips into them now and she wishes she was at least wearing heels, so she could walk away and strike fear in his heart.

Even though she doesn’t want to, and mostly wants him to pull this back into another story. One where she doesn’t wear a form-fitting dress for the visual distraction and isn’t acutely aware of the movement of everyone’s hands.

She’s at camp. She’s in tennis shoes and a stained pair of shorts, from Evie’s dirty fingers a week ago. She’s sitting on the bench where Beth smiled at her and Art smiles at her and she wears no makeup and finally looks her age. So. She doesn’t understand why her spine won’t listen.

“No one ever asks,” she hears herself saying, too shy to be her own words.

It isn’t even a proper response and sounds nothing like the girl who entertains or the girl who lives under ice or the girl who fixed her problems for exactly one night and woke up to find them cracked open again.

Art’s expression shifts and then he’s looking at her like she’s- like she’s Beth. Like she just let a grenade tumble through her lips and no one knows where it landed.

 _Honestly_. She couldn’t be doing worse if she tried.

“You’re with Sarah Manning, right?” he asks, like he’s trying to run through a list of reasons why no one cares about her.

And the truth is, outside of whatever awful error in judgment that is what she and Sarah did, there really isn’t anyone who cares about her here. She could leave tomorrow and no one would even notice.

“Mhm,” she replies too light.

 _With_ her. She wants to laugh.

He rubs at his chin, frowning. “It’s been a… This summer’s been a little weird. Compared to the last few years. Something in the air, maybe.”

It doesn’t quite land as the excuse he seems to want it to be.

 _Do you know?_ she wants to ask.

She thinks for a second she’d see it on his face if he did but there’s something that tells her that’s not true; that he knows how to keep it to himself.

“I guess you don’t go to the campfires,” he says.

That one night she did hits her throat hot like cinnamon whiskey and she has to fight not to taste Sarah.

“Do you?” she asks as her fingers strangle her coffee cup.

His shoulders lift and his hands twist with them, palms soft and upwards. “Not so much these days, no. Kinda stopped when- ah, Beth did.”

The music cuts and the kids freeze in place, whoever isn’t on an island tagged out.

Rachel’s stomach flips with what she can only identify as an offshoot of dread.

Of course.

“She’s had a difficult time,” she says, quietly, because she now knows she can trust him with this.

He fits his lips together in the kind of wry smile she’d expect to come from Beth, when she was still able to smile, when she could still keep the worst of her emotions inside her so no one had to know.

“She used to be…” He pauses, bringing his knuckles up to his face and then shaking his head. “A lot more. Than this.”

Rachel tries to bite down on the greed that floods her – how desperately she wants to know all of it, all the pieces of Beth that came before this, the many people she was to those who knew her and loved her and still couldn’t save her in spite of that.

 _How did it happen?_ she wants to ask. _What was she like?_

But it would only be an invasion; a nail in his wound that he doesn’t deserve. She knows without asking that Beth is a loss to him. Even the fact that she didn’t know until now, that he was someone in Beth’s life, lays out how terrible it must be to have had even a piece of her.

“So I’ve heard,” she settles on saying, and he seems appreciative as she rubs her wrist.

Despite the questions she’d love to have answered, she lets it rest. If he had any involvement with Beth it isn’t something for Rachel to know.

In their silence he turns his attention to the kids on the mats, tapping out the beat of the song on his knee. Rachel tries to focus on the kids as well. She has to. Because she doesn’t want to admit, even to herself, that the gnawing deep in her abdomen isn’t quite sympathy alone – it’s resentment, too. That there’s yet another person Beth would so willingly leave behind.

Maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t but of one thing Rachel’s sure: he wasn’t someone Beth considered when she decided she’d had enough.

And Rachel truly hates her for it.

 

* * *

 

The gong’s mournful wail marks the end of Rachel’s afternoon responsibilities, it being one of the rare weekends she’s given scheduled time off. Her kids will return before dinner and she’ll go back to her duties then but until the buses come back she’s free to do whatever she pleases.

It’s exciting for exactly three minutes as she leaves the rec hall and realizes Sarah will be at the cabin.

And then it feels like yet another punishment for her own pathetic actions.

(She’s thought about it. The look on Sarah’s face in the forest, right after Rachel said what she did. Sarah _wanted_ to believe it. She _had_ to, because- because the alternative, that she didn’t, that Rachel took the slightest nod and ran with it, is too much to bear. She already has a wrist that she’s sure could use a tensor bandage. She already has teeth marks where anyone could see.)

Before she can convince herself otherwise, she swings by the cabins to grab something to keep her occupied for the next hour and a half. It’s fine. Sarah’s in her own cabin, moving around on the other side of the wall like something sad and wounded, but it’s really okay.

Rachel grabs a book and her cigarettes and then leaves.

She does. She doesn’t even look back; not once and she doesn’t see Sarah at the screen door, splattered in paint. (It isn’t red. This she can tell herself for sure.)

 _It’s over_ , Sarah said at lunch. So-

It doesn’t explain why Rachel stumbles, in the dirt, thinking only of the look in Sarah’s eyes.

_If I said I was sorry…_

But she doesn’t _want_ to be. She kicks up dust along the path, dragging her toes, as rough and loud as she can be because someone has to do it in Sarah’s absence. She follows the curve past empty cabins. Everyone’s somewhere else.

What she wants is to have her book back and not be stuck with something that doesn’t excite her in the least. She doesn’t care about Sartre in the way that she thought she would when she was packing for the summer – it’s from home, yes, and she took notes in the margins, but it doesn’t make her ache.

It doesn’t make her need to pull the words from her flesh, each line embedded deep. (It doesn’t have her mother in the punctuation. The pencil marks.)

The forest thins out a little once she’s on the other side of the cabins and then thickens in small clusters, as if someone could be chased through the trees and have enough trunks to wind around to keep the game going for hours. There’s space here, is what she means to say. She can sit on a log and light a cigarette. She can pretend she’s alone and the body moving closer isn’t one that wears her bracelets.

Her back aches the way she has herself positioned on the log, but it’s a distraction from the constant throbbing in the joint of her wrist, and at any rate this is what she’d like to notice instead of the feet that crush the tall, seed-heavy grass.

Maybe they’re just passing through. She considers it.

But they walk so lightly, even with the destruction it brings. They’re trying to be careful.

Rachel finally takes a drag of the cigarette as if it could taste like anything other than Sarah.

She holds her head down. She blows smoke at the moss that drips over the log.

She lets Beth sit.

She could tally it right now, the amount of times she’s allowed people to puncture her space this summer simply because they wouldn’t walk away if she asked them to. But then she’d have to admit to herself that she never asked. And that, if she had, she’s sure Beth would have left every time because Beth holds herself impeccably still on the wet end of the log and still doesn’t say a word.

Maybe this is Beth’s spot that Rachel’s taken. It hadn’t occurred to her until now. 

“I can go,” she says reluctantly, tapping ash against a low snarled branch.

“You were here first,” Beth says, and it’s soft like the light that finds them here.

Her hair’s braided – Rachel doesn’t know why it took her until now to notice, but Beth sits like she’s made of marble and her hair has Sarah’s fingers all through it just as Rachel told her to do.

It shouldn’t have her stomach churning.

She wishes it didn’t look beautiful.

She cracks open her book to make it clear she isn’t here for conversation, letting ash land like snow on the pages as she flicks the cigarette, then brings it to her lips, then fills her lungs and breathes out a cloud.

“Sarah gave them back, then,” Beth says.

Her voice hesitates on Sarah’s name, a small waver, as if she isn’t sure it’s something she’s allowed to say.

And then Rachel understands: that it’s all guilt. That’s what weighs her down at the corners now. She put everyone through hell and came back to expect… absolution? Rachel doesn’t even know, but she looks down at her book and can’t find her mother and won’t turn to Beth because she knows what she’ll see.

“They weren’t hers to take,” she replies, and it comes out pinched.

She’s given her a weakness. She wants Beth to rip it open so she has a reason to leave, hating how every second that passes only increases the hot prickling of her skin.

It’s silent. She can feel her pulse in her wrist and it’s sore.

Beside her Beth makes a small sound akin to silk shifting against itself – soft, like it can barely believe it exists. Her legs stretch out into Rachel’s peripheral vision. Rachel taps the cigarette and waits, and Beth still doesn’t pounce.

“She seems to be pretty good at that,” Beth says, and Rachel looks and Beth has the end of her braid between her fingers. “Taking.”

It isn’t angry; Rachel doesn’t know _what_ to make of it. Beth’s talking about Paul, of course, but should she be? After what Sarah did for her? After what it did to Sarah? She’s sitting here with her hair in a braid thanks to Sarah’s hand and alive because Sarah couldn’t look the other way and everything inside Rachel is clenched so tight she wonders if it’s possible to tense up to the point of dying, fingers shaking as they grip the cigarette. She takes a drag. She tries to exhale without revealing anything. The smoke blows in Beth’s direction and she doesn’t care at all.

“Ali thinks I’m with Paul,” Beth says, mostly to herself.

“You should be,” Rachel says before she can stop it from slipping out.

It’s cold. Beth turns with eyes like glass, and where Rachel expects remorse she only feels bitterness.

For a second it seems like Beth’s about to cry – here, under a cluster of trees, everything a bit _too_ green; a bit _too_ warm. She’s still wearing long sleeves but they’re pushed up and the bracelets are tied snug on top of the bandages like she’s trying to ease herself into it. She inhales shakily. And then her shoulders square and Rachel’s seeing her as she imagines Paul’s grown used to: jaw tight and expression gone, just waiting for the fight.

Almost as if she wants it.

So. Rachel bites.

“You should be comforting him,” she says. She ashes the cigarette then meets Beth’s cold gaze. “What you did to him – my god, you could have broken him. And Art?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Beth cuts her off.

She’s sitting forward, angled as if she might reach out and hit Rachel, her sneakers planted firmly on the ground. It’s the most present Rachel’s seen her all summer. It coils anger in the pit of her stomach.

“You’re lucky Sarah stopped you,” she spits.

Beth laughs. Harsh. “Yeah, real lucky. To come back to all of this.”

She pushes off the log and moves as if she’s about to take off, but Rachel rises as well and her action seems to anchor Beth to the spot as if they’re suddenly tethered together. Her arms fold over her chest instead and she shakes her head, the angry smile splitting her mouth. Just a gash. She deserves it.

“You’re so selfish,” Rachel says to her feet.

She doesn’t know why she can’t stop herself. It feels like something boiling inside her and the only way to release it is to feed the reaction in Beth. Like the beast in Rachel will only be sated when it’s completely purged itself into someone else. And there Beth is, glaring.

“Go to hell,” Beth says, a moment too late.

She’s slipping. Rachel can sense it and something slips inside her too, like she’s tied herself too tight to this and forgot about Beth’s claws.

“You know my mother killed herself,” she says, and it comes out torn.

Beth curls her fingers. Her eyes remain on Rachel, abruptly passive, her lips pressing together to catch the stutter. She brings a fist to her braid and then just rests her knuckles against it. Everything in her seems to be recalculating and Rachel realizes with sickening clarity she’s just given away her entire hand.

“How’d she do it,” Beth asks.

Rachel’s abdominal muscles contract. She feels too hot, too off-balance. “Pills,” she says. “They didn’t kill her right away; she suffered.”

It’s what she’s told herself all these years. She needs to believe it because the other option, that her mother felt nothing, just slowly let go, wouldn’t be cruel enough. Beth looks at her like she’s slashed herself open. Maybe slashed them both.

“I found her,” she goes on. It’s like pulling barbed wire through her teeth and she can’t stop. “I should have left her there.”

_Sarah should have left you there._

Beth twists on one foot a little, until she’s in profile. Her face is completely in the sun so she can’t see a thing. She wraps her fingers around her wrist, pinning the bracelets in place, and Rachel registers that she’s wearing them to hide the blood staining the bandages.

“It’s complicated,” Beth says, like she’s trying to excuse it.

Rachel’s mother. Herself.

Rachel imagines Beth in the water. In the lake, her skin gaping. She’s Ophelia for an entire minute. Then she’s standing in the sun on tiny purple flowers and Rachel’s nauseous.

“She left me to rot,” she says, and turns on her heel to hide the hot threat of tears.

The flowers are everywhere – she doesn’t know how she didn’t notice before, but they bleed through the tall green grass like an infestation. They’re under her own feet. She’s crushing them. She’s crushing them and she doesn’t hear Beth moving closer.

The hand on her arm is cold; grip too tight.

“Rachel,” Beth says. Hard. “She didn’t think about you at all.”

“I _hate you_ ,” Rachel snarls. She lets the tears well up and then blinks them down her cheeks, waiting for Beth to notice before yanking her sore arm free.

“That’s okay,” Beth says with her hands empty. “I know.”

Rachel touches her cheekbone. She really is _crying_. About her mother. She lets out a tangy laugh.

If she was Sarah she’d run, but she’s never been fast enough.

She wants Beth to look at her with anger again; Beth only seems to stare with pity, and Rachel can’t find anything in her to fix that.

“You don’t deserve them,” she tells her, pathetically weak.

She means everyone. Everyone who still loves Beth in the aftermath because there would be no one who stuck around for Rachel.

“I know,” Beth repeats. It’s soft enough for Rachel to scoff.

It seems like Beth wants to say something more so Rachel finally takes off, nowhere close to Sarah’s usual slighted speed, and puts as much distance as she can between them before letting her shoulders drop.

 _My mother killed herself_ , she hears echoing around her head, in her own awful childish voice.

Mocking her. Reminding her how desperately she opened up.

_Love me. Love me. Change the story and don’t leave me._

She left her book on the log but there’s no going back now; it will just be another thing she’s lost here.

She’s halfway through the forest when she collapses. Her knees hit the dirt and her body heaves like it’s only now realizing –  what exactly she put behind her. _My mother killed herself._ She cries, hard and heavy, until she’s run out of time, until she hears the buses coming up over the hills at the mouth of the camp. And then she stops and wipes her face and that’s the end of it.

She’s her usual self by the dinner gong. (Or: no one cares enough to notice a difference.)

 

* * *

 

Sarah still, somehow, has paint on her by lights out, a spatter of blue and purple and green across her limbs like something detonated right at her feet. She told Paul she’d man the cool colours. It seemed easiest, to not have to stand on a tarp of puddled red and feel it warm between her toes.

Because it was all so warm, in the sun; they were baking, in the middle of the field, and she kept thinking how cruel it was to make Paul stand in the red paint when she knew he’d only associate it with Beth.

But he wasn’t there. If this is all he has to remember it by then he’ll be fine.

(She pictured- callously, while the kids stomped across mural paper, she pictured him curling his hands around Beth’s wrists, gently, of course, and his fingertips meeting across her scars, as if he really almost could make them disappear completely. How would he feel? She wanted to say sad. But maybe nothing. She wanted to hurt him. But maybe she didn’t.)

She could’ve showered. Really, she gets why the paint’s still there. But despite the cool colours she just couldn’t stand in the weak stream and scrub until she could see her skin again; it was a small mercy that Beth switched with Paul at the last minute, and even then Sarah could barely handle it. It wasn’t the first time she tried to get clean in a tiny sink, anyway. It almost felt like coming home.

What also feels like home: pocketing a mickey of gin before she sneaks out the cabin, flashlight off and in her hand, a quick weapon, as if she still expects someone to come at her from any corner.

She’s _eighteen_ , for Christ’s sake. She has S. Vic’s gone. She’s so tired of the sick crawl of panic.

The gin sloshes in her back pocket as she creeps down the steps, and despite knowing Rachel’s back to this ice bitch persona she still waits for the screen door to creak open and a cut-glass voice to reprimand her.

_Drinking again, Sarah? How irresponsible._

_Yeah, well, it’s because of you. Because you’re too scared to-_

She looks back, just in case. Rachel’s side of the cabin is completely dark.

Delphine said to meet them at the boathouse, everyone else likely to be at the campfire tonight, because with the exception of Paul they’re having a fantastic summer and feel great and want to enjoy themselves. Sarah wonders if Paul even goes anymore; she hasn’t been in a while, and it feels right for Beth to finally take something from him.

If he cares.

He does. She doesn’t know why she keeps doubting it. He cares the same as Sarah, like it would tear him in half if she hadn’t managed to get Beth to Delphine’s cabin.

She stumbles on a path she knows better than the back of her hand. But catches herself, and she’s almost okay to come through the forest the same way she did the handful of times Beth was there at the lake, breaking through the trees with a sharp intake of air as nothing awaits her in the sand. Just the boathouse. Just a light inside that’s all for her.

“Hey,” Cosima says with the warmest smile, meeting Sarah in the doorway, already slightly flushed.

They’ve set up more than enough lanterns around this wing of the boathouse, reflecting calmly off the still water and the spiderwebs that fill the corners. Delphine’s in one of the rowboats with a blanket and has, on top of Styrofoam cups from the mess hall, the night’s alcohol stash set up on the middle bench with an open bag of pretzels.

“In case we get a bit _too_ drunk,” Delphine says when she catches Sarah looking.

Sarah hands over her bottle of gin. “In case we want to.”

They share a grin, and Cosima takes Sarah’s hand to help her into the boat before joining her. This time Sarah isn’t sitting alone; the three of them cram into one section, squashed tight on a nest of lifejackets. Sarah’s pretty sure a spider brushes her knee but she’s also pressed against Delphine and has Cosima pouring her a drink and it doesn’t matter.

It really doesn’t matter.

“To Rachel,” she mutters as she takes her first sip, something sharp like Cinnamon Hearts.

She squints at the bottle: Fireball. It’s not cheap, so it has to be Delphine’s. Steady job _and_ legal drinking age in her province.

Cosima glances to Delphine momentarily, the two of them unsure, but then she lifts her cup. “To the bitch who broke your heart. If I’m allowed to say that. Is that… okay?”

Sarah smiles and shakes her head, taking another drink. “Go for it. I don’t care.”

It feels good for a whole minute, until Delphine’s eyes are on her like truth-seeking missiles. She’d believe Sarah’s lie if that’s what Sarah really wanted but frowning at her, like this, all soft and considerate, Sarah has to drop her shoulders.

“You can talk about it,” Delphine offers. She shifts a little and the boat rocks, ripples on the water catching in the tungsten light.

Something dark moves under the water’s surface like a predator. Or something scared. Sarah strains her eyes even after it’s disappeared.

“Yeah, no,” she says over the side of the boat. “Gonna need to be drunk for that.”

“Shots?” Cosima suggests.

Sarah’s already tilting her cup back so the liquid hits her throat hot, one gulp, burning the whole way down. Cosima grins and takes it from her to refill it.

If Delphine minds that they’re going to drink their way through what’s left of her thirty-dollar bottle it doesn’t show; in fact she slides along the alcohol like a tiny conveyor belt, her fingers long in the shadowed light, stretching far across the veneer of the wood.

Sarah pours another half cup of Fireball down her throat.

And then a third.

She feels prickly by the time they open the gin, a little too hot, considering telling them the boy who bought this for her only did it because he thought she’d hook up with him again, and even though it’s Cosima’s hands that hold the bottle she sees the boy’s hairy knuckles and can taste his skin on her tongue.

Maybe the thing is she hates herself. Maybe it’s only that she feels fine when someone’s touching her, because they don’t seem to recoil and she can convince herself she deserves it. Maybe this is Rachel.

“It isn’t,” Cosima mumbles.

Sarah tilts her head back in shame, teeth pressing into her tongue. “Fuck. I didn’t… That was for my head.”

“Came out,” Cosima says with a shrug. Sarah feels it, the action moving her own shoulder.

They’re all sort of draped over each other; Delphine keeps picking salt off the pretzels and dropping it into the lake, and Cosima’s been sipping vodka like she can’t taste it at all, her hand on Sarah’s leg under a corner of the blanket. Sarah doesn’t know if she knows it’s not Delphine’s leg, but it’s warm, and she doesn’t mind.

“I thought I knew what I was doing,” Sarah says, because it’s all coming out now.

It roils in her stomach. It claws. She wants it to stay down, but the thought of keeping it inside her any longer makes her want to cry.

“Rachel isn’t some sleazy boy,” Cosima says in the general direction of a rack of kayaks.

“Not Paul,” Delphine agrees. She places another de-salted pretzel on the boat bench. The pile grows.

“He wasn’t,” Sarah tries to argue, but it doesn’t matter. She can taste him on her tongue too. The way he wanted to prove himself like no one had asked that of him before. “She isn’t. She didn’t know what she was doing either, you know. She was scared.”

It’s coming out slurred now. _Shh w’scared._ It’s ridiculous but she can’t stop it, and she swipes one of Delphine’s naked pretzels to maybe combat the amount of alcohol in her because she’s remembering how hard the hangover hit her last time.

At least Delphine and Cosima’s kids go home tomorrow; they have a night off, to curl up together with painkillers and sleep through the worst of it.

Sarah really wants someone to curl up with her.

“Do you think she’s been with a girl before?” Delphine asks, her words less defined than usual, but annoyingly nowhere near Sarah’s level. “Is that it?”

“She’s a _robot_ ,” Sarah says. And then, “No. Didn’t seem to care with her fingers-”

She cuts herself off to eat another pretzel. Cosima’s eyes are wide.

“Oh,” she says. “Okaay.”

“Huh,” Delphine concurs with a dip of her head, her hair hitting Sarah’s cheek.

It smells like sugar and for whatever reason that brings tears to Sarah’s eyes.

“What even happened?” Cosima asks right as she notices that Sarah’s eyes are wet, and then her hand moves up Sarah’s leg to find Sarah’s hand under the blanket.

It’s a little sticky, but it makes Sarah feel a bit better. And then Delphine puts another pretzel in Sarah’s mouth and Sarah crunches appreciatively as the boat sways.

“Short version,” she says around the pretzel chunks, wishing for water and salt, “she has this book, and. I took it. And it’s about like- suicide, and shit. So, and she- I just really wanted to kiss her, like, proper, no one dying, or-”

She’s _whining_. As soon as she notices she shuts up, but Delphine’s still glancing back and forth between her and Cosima with pink cheeks and Sarah just lets out a long breath that only makes her think of Rachel.

It was the book, right? But Rachel wouldn’t look at her before that, even though she kissed back like it was the only thing she wanted in the whole world. Sarah can admit it now because she doesn’t think she’ll remember it in the morning. Rachel really, really wanted her. She just wanted to be lonely more.

“S’over, anyway,” she mumbles. “I told her.”

 _Good_ , she thinks Cosima says. It sounds like Rachel’s voice. Everything does – everything that they say, now, like she’s sitting here half on her back having this conversation with Rachel, trying to tell Rachel the details of what went down when Rachel should _know_. Rachel should be holding her hand and nodding. _That is the night you gave me back my cigarettes, that’s right_.

Sarah shuts her eyes so she can see Rachel stroking her forehead instead.

 _Good girl_ , Rachel says. _Drink some water. Good girl._

Rachel holds her hair back. Rachel doesn’t get mad that there’s vomit in the lake now, with the fish and the gasoline and the cigarette butts Sarah shouldn’t have smoked in the first place.

 _I’m sorry_ , she says.

Rachel isn’t mad. Rachel puts something cool on her face, and it feels wonderful. Like a kiss.

Rachel takes her hand and holds it like this is what she wants to do for the rest of her life; it’s the safest Sarah’s felt in a long time, and she thinks she can walk back without needing the flashlight in her fist just in case.

She asks Rachel to tell her the story, of that guy and the rock, and she’s pretending she doesn’t know it so Rachel can give her that amused little look and break it down into child pieces like it’s on a plastic dinner plate with a plastic fork and knife. She holds her breath so Rachel can tell her one more time: _if this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?_

She _gets_ it.

She puts her fingers on the page, right over Rachel’s words in pencil, and understands.

Rachel slips away. Sarah doesn’t open her eyes.

 _Tell her I think she might surprise herself_ , she says, to whoever’s holding the door open in the dark. The wedge of light is painful but she thinks she sees Rachel’s form in it and she wills it to turn back. It doesn’t. She loves it anyway.

“Go to sleep, Sarah,” Cosima says.

Something rocks her. Gentle. Something bites her but she doesn’t mind.

She loves it anyway.

 

* * *

 

Sarah wakes four times in the night, or what’s left of it, each time surprised to find herself in her own bed. Someone filled up her water bottle (she thinks Rachel, before realizing that’s ridiculous) and she gulps greedily until she’s too nauseous and then falls asleep again. She’s dying to pee by the morning bugle but still puts off getting up until a kid opens her door.

“You look gross,” Quinn says. Sarah can feel makeup crusted down her cheek. “Madeleine says get up.”

By sheer force of will, Sarah drags herself into a toilet stall, then into the shower despite feeble protests from whichever kid was supposed to go next. She sits on the scummy tiles until something in her clicks to clean. She’s using someone’s forgotten bar of soap, but it gets the paint off. And most of last night.

She doesn’t puke again, at least. It feels like a small victory. And hearing Rachel in her room, through the wall, getting dressed as Sarah struggles into a dirty pair of shorts, it feels like an exceptional feat.

“Can you, like, maybe pretend to be with us?” Naomi says at breakfast, a hand in front of Sarah’s face.

She blinks and they’re all staring at her like she’s been part of this conversation for the past- shit, twenty minutes, and then she blinks again and forces out an apologetic smile.

“Little tired, sorry,” she says.

A few girls shake their heads, but the conversation carries on and she manages to croak out enough adequate responses to satisfy them.

She’s propped up by the time Delphine and Cosima roll into the mess hall – _barely_ , but it still counts, and after depositing their kids with Mark and Art they take their trays straight to her table and bookend her to help her stay upright.

“What’s up,” Cosima says to the group. Unsure of what to make of her, they smile or stare back, shifting to give her space on the bench. Delphine doesn’t even bother addressing them.

She, at least, seems to be on Sarah’s level this morning.

“You know what impresses me?” Delphine mutters as she stirs her coffee, nudging the extra one closer to Sarah’s arm.

Sarah pulls it over carefully, not so much afraid of spilling but more wary of what sudden movements would do to her underlying headache. She tries not to look down the table to where Rachel sits with a book Sarah’s never seen before.

“What,” she replies.

Cosima stabs a home fry three times before getting it on her fork. Madeleine watches with disdain.

“How you managed to… _hydrate_ … more than any of us, and still look so…” Delphine waves a hand, then immediately regrets the motion as she winces. “Fine.”

Sarah snorts. “Trust me, mate. Something’s in my head drilling.”

Cosima’s home fry falls off her fork into the puddle of ketchup and she drops her head in defeat.

“We’re not stupid,” Madeleine says. She clatters her knife against her plate on purpose, making all three counselors jump.

“What do you mean?” Sarah gets out the best she can, but she rubs her eye and notices a smear of black on her finger, and then her lips flatten in shame.

Madeleine shakes her head. Daniela raises an amused eyebrow.

“Hangover,” Quinn mutters to Sophia.

“Christ,” Sarah says under her breath. She buries it in a sip of coffee, hating that it somehow tastes good this morning.

“All the little kids go home today,” Madeleine says as she scrapes her fork against her plate with a pointed look to Cosima. “So you guys had a party and now you’re regretting it.”

There’s a snicker from down the table and Sarah’s _so ready_ to hurl the napkin dispenser at Rachel’s head. It’s her fault, after all. If she hadn’t been such a bitch about all of this Sarah wouldn’t have needed to get drunk in the first place, now suffering in front of ten kids who seem all too pleased to witness her misery. Except Zohal, who mostly looks lost. She can stay. Sarah can do without the rest of them.

“Hey, it’s Sunday,” Cosima says. “Be nice.”

“Why, because it’s a holy day?” Quinn asks, making an expression that shows how little she values that.

Sarah sinks her teeth into an unripe slice of mango and decides she’s done with all of it. All of them. Especially Rachel, who rises as if she might say something before sharply veering towards the drinks cart with a hand in her pocket. It should look unnatural. It… doesn’t, and Sarah hates her for it.

“Listen,” Delphine says, straightening up with impressive authority that instantly shrinks the kids. “You are all old enough to choose to be kind. I expected better from the eleven year-olds.”

It quiets them, bringing a shame to the table that Sarah almost can’t stand to see.

They’re solemn enough that they miss Delphine’s pained smirk on Sarah’s behalf as she downs half her coffee in one go. Then she’s up as well, and heading back to the kitchen area. To the drinks cart.

“What is she…” Sarah asks, nudging Cosima.

Cosima lifts her head from where she was frowning at her plate and follows Sarah’s line of sight. Delphine catches Rachel as she’s turning, a cup of coffee in hand, her mouth opening in surprise that’s only barely smothered by instinctive composure.

“Ooh,” Cosima murmurs. “Uh. That’s not good.”

The interaction lasts less than a minute, but Rachel’s hand is out of her pocket on the way back, instead crossed over her abdomen as if she’s holding something in. She doesn’t turn her head at all in Sarah’s direction as she takes a seat. Delphine returns with a second cup of coffee and says nothing. Sarah isn’t sure if she wants her to.

“You should drink water,” Quinn says, off the fourth cup of coffee joining the table.

It’s surprisingly kind and Sarah wonders where that came from before thinking of Quinn’s mother.

“Like, hydrate,” Quinn adds with a shrug.

Sarah’s hand drifts over to her water bottle and Quinn nods encouragingly before averting her eyes. Sameera smiles a little. Sarah takes a sip of water and receives a thumbs up from Ava.

“See, that’s helpful,” Delphine says with a grimace. She produces a painkiller from nowhere and puts it between her teeth then swallows it with more coffee. Sarah marvels at how incredibly _French_ the action is.

Quinn seems to consider her response carefully, stabbing holes through her waffle. “Well Sarah’s mean when she’s, you know. Um. Sick.”

Zohal’s confusion grows and even though Quinn looks ready to roll her eyes at her questioning noise she refrains. Sarah would commend her if she wasn’t currently flooding her waffle with syrup in a way that has Sarah’s stomach rolling. She takes another sip of water instead and avoids everyone’s gaze. 

“I guess we do need her for beach volleyball,” Madeleine says reluctantly, Naomi nodding with her.

Sarah had forgotten. So there’s that to look forward to, too.

“Who’re we playing,” she asks as she rests her head against her arms on the table.

It’s like déjà vu, how all she can see is the napkin dispenser and a bit of sticky tabletop, but Rachel’s not coming over this time to make fun of her. Rachel’s quiet. Because of Delphine. Sarah can’t figure out how she feels about any of it.

It’d be just her luck if the kids said Rachel’s group, but it isn’t; they’re playing Alison which might actually be worse. (And the kids seem to get that, too, with the tone of their response. Almost as if they’ve tired themselves out of camp songs.)

Cosima and Delphine stay for another ten minutes before one of their own kids starts crying, back at their table, presumably about having to go home but who knows with the tiny ones. Mark comes over to inform them with the sort of expression that makes Sarah understand why Gracie likes him so much. It’s condescending, a little, but no bite.

Like he’s either a good person or just can’t be bothered to really judge today. Kind of like Rachel, who Sarah sees as they’re leaving, a fraught moment of eye contact that has Sarah convinced she really will throw up again until Rachel drops her gaze and rushes her kids away.

She’s in the cabin by the time Sarah catches up, absolutely quiet.

(Sarah just wants to tell her-)

(What?)

There’s silence through the shared wall as Sarah makes her kids clean for inspections. Not a peep. Like Rachel told them it’s a game, in whispers: _the real witch is out there. We can’t let her hear us._

Sarah’s girls say nothing as she curls up on top of her bed, leaving them to sweep and shine the taps and scrub the toothpaste from the cracked porcelain sinks.

She’s resting. Just until Reflection Time.

Just staring at Rachel’s book on her bedside table.

(That she believed in her. That’s what she wanted to say. _Rachel: I really do think you could do it if you tried._ But she won’t. So it doesn’t matter at all.)

 

* * *

 

The temperature dips after breakfast, oddly, and instead of changing out of her shorts Sarah brings a blanket to Reflection Time like she’s one of the younger campers who can’t think of God without a shield.

It’s a fake God at camp, anyway. It isn’t anything with a name; they sit around the unlit fire pit on logs and benches and sit-upons and the director talks about nature and supervisory staff take turns leading meditations on what it means to care, or responsibility, or the bullshitty sound of water. Like they’re all supposed to pretend they don’t know what Sunday means to half the bloody world.

Sometimes it’s Sarah’s least favorite part of camp. (Sometimes it’s her favorite, but that’s only ever when she stops listening and just breathes in the clean air like there’s no history attached to this body.) It’s too quiet. It leaves her with her thoughts. She has to pretend she has no idea Rachel’s only several feet away and there’s another reason for her spending the full ninety minutes staring at the dirt.

She sits with Delphine today to ensure Rachel isn’t anywhere near her – in the back, on a half-log bench, not far from where Cosima has her head in a kid’s lap.

“It’s a good look,” Delphine says of Sarah’s blanket wrapped tight around her like a greying cloak.

But it keeps her warm, and five minutes into the director’s grand morning speech she’s opened it up so Delphine can join her. They both kind of still smell like last night; alcohol and the lake at its worst. Delphine definitely showered, her curls damp and lavender-scented, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

“I should probably regret it, right? Last night?” she mutters as the director gets a laugh from the crowd, her face all but pressed into Delphine’s with how close they’re huddled.

“Not necessarily,” Delphine says, despite her fourth cup of coffee sitting snug in her hand. “If it was cathartic, in any way, then I don’t think so.”

Sarah mulls it over for a minute. The director passes the talking stick to a lady with wire-rimmed glasses and faded glitter rains down from their hands.

“Do you regret it?” she asks.

This lady isn’t loud enough to quite cover the sound of Sarah’s voice and a couple kids from Alison’s group look over, their log closest today. Weirdly, Alison doesn’t budge. But she’s sitting in a way that seems like all she can see is Beth on the log across from her and Sarah doesn’t want to think about it.

“No,” Delphine says just above a whisper. Beth doesn’t have the bandages on at all. “Consider it a preview of our Montreal romp.”

Sarah can’t see blood either – just bracelets, thick, too pretty to be anything a kid made. She lifts her eyes a little and finds Beth looking back. Empty. Completely empty.

“Hm, yeah,” she says, realizing Delphine’s said something, but then it registers and she turns her head. “You’re gonna kill me, aren’t you.”

“Just your liver,” Delphine murmurs, but she seems to be looking at Beth too.  
  
If Beth’s aware that there are at least three pairs of eyes on her it doesn’t show; she’s picking mindlessly at a hangnail, her jaw slack. Every time the lady’s voice rises Beth blinks. Maybe she’s just tired – Sarah really considers it, but then she remembers what tired looks like on Beth. What it leads to.

She finds Delphine’s wrist under the blanket and moves her fingers until they locate unmarred skin, soft, pulse steady just under her touch. Delphine leans into her.

 _You were so calm that night_ , she wants to tell her. _You were the real reason she survived. I don’t know how you did it._

“I wanted to believe it was the right thing,” Delphine whispers.

She moves the coffee to her other hand and her fingers tangle with Sarah’s, like in this moment she needs something to tether her.

“What was?” Sarah whispers back.

Beth glances down at her bracelets. Maybe to check that they’re still in place, maybe to remind herself.

“Her coming back,” Delphine replies. “To camp. I knew it wasn’t. But still I-”

She falters and Beth looks up again, entirely expressionless. Alison is sitting stiffer than Sarah’s ever seen her before. Paul, in the back with Tony, seems to be watching his girlfriend in the same scared way and Sarah doesn’t know how to make any of this better or how to feel any less guilty about being the reason Beth returned.

Because she was the reason Beth didn’t get what she wanted. And she doesn’t know, in the middle of this empty meditation, if that’s a good thing anymore.

 _Do you regret it?_ she wants to ask Delphine again. _Saving her?_

But it sounds terrible – cruel, and heartless, and Sarah couldn’t even make her lips form the words if she tried.

The next staff member starts a song. _Oh the time to be happy is now, and the place to be happy is here. And the way to be happy is to make others happy_ -

“What if we just left,” Sarah whispers to Delphine.

She means the fire pit, but camp too. What if they just got up and walked away and never came back.

_Oh the time to be –appy is now, and the place to be –appy is -ere. And the way-_

“We’d still know,” Delphine murmurs.

She has one of Sarah’s knuckles tight between her own like she could break it if she wanted to. Sarah thinks of punching Paul; of the whole night, covered in blood. The way Rachel sat with her on the rock and held her and then the porch where she…

_Oh the time to be –-- is now, and the place to be –-- is –--._

Christ.

Delphine drinks her coffee while squeezing Sarah’s hand. Beth has her eyes closed.

Sarah’s headache returns with a vengeance, all of a sudden, like a roll of thunder. It’s blinding.

She stares at the ash in the fire pit and the song ends and all the voices die at once, everything silent. Then cicadas. And wind in the trees.

“I hate her,” Delphine says under her breath, and Sarah thinks she means Beth until realizing it’s the smiley woman now waxing poetic about Mother Nature.

“Why?” Sarah asks.

She accidentally looks to Rachel and flinches. Her head is pounding.

Delphine’s fingers flex against Sarah’s, tense before they finally relax. “Because it’s easy. She makes it too easy.”

Rachel is small; she could fit inside a box, her shoulders curled. Sarah suddenly sees Delphine in every part of her. _What did you do?_ she should ask. But she doesn’t want to know. Whatever it is, Rachel won’t look at her anymore. This is what she wanted, so-

So she doesn’t know why she’s thinking of fucking Sisyphus. Now.

What Rachel told her; _you’d find a way out of it, you know._ Of course she would. She always has. Maybe it’s that she’s realizing Rachel is less of a rock than she thought.

Or that her own arms are so, so tired.

 

* * *

 

Parents on the grounds means that everyone needs to at least try to look presentable, so Sarah’s blanket goes back to the cabin before lunch and she freezes in the mess hall because _someone_ decided to prop open both doors to let in what’s less of a breeze and more the arctic promise of an oncoming storm.

The skies are only a little grey, but things can change up here all too quickly. Sarah’s learned this. She sits with her knees up, to keep her warm, eyes on the stretch of hazy sky barely visible through the doors.

“My brother’s coming to camp next year,” Madeleine says when the first couple parents step into the mess hall to find their kids.

Delphine has an impressively professional smile on her face as she hands over a sign-out form, but she’s also on her sixth cup of coffee and holds her clipboard just tight enough for Sarah to still see the effects of the hangover. (Cosima’s given up entirely. But she’s given up with a kid in her lap, letting Mark handle the forms for the both of them, so at least it looks a little better than just her alone slouched on the table.)

“You’ll be gone, though,” Afsheen tells Madeleine. “Senior camp. If you come back.”

They still have four weeks left so Sarah doesn’t know why they’re discussing it now, a lump forming in her throat at the thought of them moving on. It has to be the tea she’s drinking; anything close to home has her too sentimental.

“You’d better,” Quinn mutters, and a handful of heads turn to her in surprise.

Madeleine gives her an amused smile that could come straight from Rachel. “And why’s that?”

Another parent enters the mess hall, hair wild from the wind outside, trying to wrestle with the giant suitcase they clearly could have picked up after signing out their kid. It’s one of Art’s – the boy gives Art a giant hug, clinging to him like he doesn’t want to go. The parent pries him off.

“Well I’m apparently coming back until I work here,” Quinn says, rolling her eyes to counter the flush to her cheeks, “according to my mother. I’d just rather, you know, know someone. Even if it is you.”

Sarah presses a hand over her mouth to stifle whatever emotional sound was ready to escape. Madeleine looks to Sarah with feigned exasperation before smiling a little to herself, avoiding Quinn’s gaze completely.

“Looks like we’ll be working here together then,” Madeleine says with the perfect nonchalant shrug.

A few of the girls chuckle at this, Naomi making the face of someone who’s seen too much of it to care. Sarah tries to picture Quinn and Madeleine as co-counselors and gets stuck on whether they’d be Beth and Alison or Seth and Rudy. Maybe some sadistic combination of the two.

Jumping jacks and pinched looks, Sarah muses as she plays with her teabag. Chaos and order. If they tried, they really could find a balancing point.

The conversation is buried with a discussion on what everyone chose for their free choice block this afternoon, after Alison’s girls no doubt smoke them in beach volleyball and Sarah rolls herself into the lake. Ten of the younger kids are gone by the time lunch is over. Cosima somehow manages to impress a few sets of parents without moving and Sarah puts enough lettuce in her body to satisfy Madeleine.

She doesn’t glance over to Rachel at all, even when Daniela joins Rachel’s group to talk to a few of her girls. She doesn’t call it anything. Not even success.

The wind dies down. Sarah follows her group to the cabin with tea smuggled out this time.

“You must love this,” a parent says to her on the path, grinning at the older kids. “A whole summer of this.”

Beth and her girls are just up ahead, supervised by Alison and ten kids who walk in a perfect line. Sarah wonders how many times Beth will use the Paul excuse to get away from her. If she’ll ever actually go see him, like a girlfriend should. It’s an empty thought. Not a single feeling attached.

Or maybe just some Beth feeling – something she’ll never be able to name, no matter how hard she tries.

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” she tells the parent, then directs them to the sixes cabin.

She forgets to smile. She hopes they don’t notice.

Her girls decide to stay inside for quiet hour today, noting the temperature and the way the sun seems to be slowly pulling back into the clouds. They’ll make crafts. Write letters. Someone flicks on a tiny battery-operated radio and the tinny sounds of summer whisper through the cabin.

She retreats to her room to read, because it makes the most sense when she surveys the cabin and can’t find anything to keep her occupied. Nothing to distract her from the unwavering grip of her hangover.

Rachel’s book has been taunting her anyway.

She’s in a nest of blankets, window open to let the wind chill her room, eyes straining to follow the words on the page when the first of the tapping starts. A quiet knock against the wall behind her head as if Rachel is in her bed as well, fingers beating into the wood.

For a stilted second, Sarah wishes she knew Morse Code like this is some secret message. But that’s not _at all_ who Rachel is, even before whatever Delphine said today.

Sarah stares hard at a small note in the book’s margin and a smudge of graphite in a shape she imagines as Rachel’s thumb.  _One must imagine Sisyphus PLACATED, truly. This escape. What it provided him. He is free with his palms on the boulder but as always it rolls down again._

The tapping is rhythmic. Footsteps, almost, heavy, as if strained against a great weight.

She can’t stop reading the myth. She can’t stop going back to it, despite everything written in the margins. Half of it isn’t even Rachel’s handwriting. (Somehow she’s memorized Rachel’s handwriting.) But it is Rachel, of course, trying to reason with the myth like it might argue back.

 _The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart._ Rachel has a question mark below it, tiny. Sarah doesn’t know which part she wants to talk to; the struggle or the heart.

Whatever taps switches to something marginally louder, and Sarah shifts in her blanket nest and can’t get comfy and then has her hand against the wall like she could feel the hand on the other side. Small knocks through the wood.

She gets it. For a second, like she’s drunk again.

She knocks back.

And one knock replies.

 _I think you’ve always been scared_ , she considers tapping. But there’s no code for this. She can’t say anything despite how much she wants to. Rachel’s on the other side alone.

Rachel’s been terrified for such a long time about her own shitty boulder and why she needs to keep rolling it.

It’s weird, because Sarah really didn’t think anything would come of taking the book. Not outside of maybe having another thing for Rachel to try and take back, this one tangible. But she’s holding it crooked so it dents her thumb and she sees the way Rachel traced through sentences with her own sad questions and it’s like some sort of answer key in the back of the textbook that makes no sense without having done the work.

Rachel let her take it because she knew she wouldn’t get it, then. Maybe that’s the faith Rachel had in her that’s gone now. That she wouldn’t see right through her.

But she doesn’t. She has this idea of a rock and Rachel standing at the bottom of a hill.

She sees blood on Rachel’s hands. She pictures the winding path the rock takes back down every time. And the gods somewhere. There are gods because this is a myth. Wax wings, or. She doesn’t know. Something Rachel did to deserve it.

She said Sarah would find a way out of it.

So: she said she knew that she herself wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Maybe because she loved it, now. Having something to put her weight against, all the way to the top, without ever having to hope.

Rachel taps again: once.

Sarah is her echo. For now. For now.

 

* * *

 

The rain holds off until Monday evening, when Rachel is walking her girls back from dinner under a black sky that suddenly breaks apart.

It’s been two days of static-electric grey so Rachel knew it was coming but it still catches her off guard, somehow – they all scream and run through the forest like a bear follows and thunder cracks the clouds and Rachel’s running with girls who aren’t her own; girls who scream just as loud, as scared, as free.

Everyone’s soaked as they clamber up the porch steps, drenched from the hair down. Rachel wipes mascara from under her eyes before anyone has a chance to see it. And then no one moves: half of Sarah’s girls are here with them, quiet as if anyone could hear them over the pounding rain anyway. The screaming down the path signifies more are on their way. Sarah’s running somewhere, too. Fast, no doubt. She always is.

 _We could go in_ , Rachel nearly says. But everyone seems content to wait. To watch the storm make curtains down the edge of the porch roof, light completely sucked from the sky like a marrow-less bone.

Water bounces back hard in the mud. The trees bend and bow under the downpour. Wind comes by in gusts, spraying mist across the porch and causing girls to jump back every few minutes like it makes a difference when they’re already this wet.

“It’s… kinda beautiful,” Marlow shouts over the roar of it.

It is. Power like this is always beautiful.

Rachel tucks her wet hair behind her ears, aware that it makes her look five years younger.

A minute later the rest of Sarah’s group bursts out of the forest and onto the porch and Sarah follows, breathing hard. She leans her whole body against the wet rail to catch her breath. Just in front of Rachel.

Rachel should step back, but-

(She can _hear_ Delphine telling her off.)

But Sarah glances up, her hair in dripping curls down her face. She looks shy. Rachel runs a finger behind her ear to ensure her own hair stays in place.

“Go inside, get warm,” Sarah shouts to everyone. “Someone’ll come round to tell us what we’re doing next. No need to catch a cold waiting.”

Rachel rocks on the balls of her feet. The girls wait a second longer, then both groups filter into their cabins. Drawers are opened inside and pipes groan from both showers. The hand-dryer goes off.

Rachel should go. She should change into something warm like everyone else.

Sarah starts to wring out her hair and it splatters over her boots and Rachel’s stained tennis shoes. There’s mud flecked across both their bare legs, like a murder scene. All the way up to Sarah’s thighs. Rachel blinks hard and looks away.

Another gust of wind brings a spray of rain through the whole length of the porch, forcing Sarah even closer to Rachel as she hops back. She’s shivering. Rachel is too, a little. From the rain.

Sarah’s eyelashes are wetly stuck together, Rachel notices entirely unwillingly. She has a new slight dusting of freckles just over her cheekbones.

It’s been so long since Rachel was this close. It has her stomach wrenching, tight and painful.

She bites her lip. Sarah clears her throat.

“Nice night for a campfire,” Sarah says. Her smile is helplessly cute.

It’s a Monday, so of course they were all supposed to sit around a fire and sing. They’ll cram into the rec hall for a movie night instead, probably. Sarah will find the farthest spot in the room and stay there, flanked by her two bodyguards. It’s worse than Beth and Alison. It’s worse than- anything.

“Go inside,” Rachel says, and her chest aches.

Sarah’s smile drops. “You go inside. This is my porch too. I just wanna watch the storm.”

There’s barely enough light to watch it, but the sky is tinged green and blurs with the trees with all the rain and Rachel wants to watch it too. She wants to watch it swell to its full power and crack branches and make rivers of the paths. She wants to watch it cackle and rub its hands together and then retreat, having done enough damage. Retreat until it’s only drizzling. Until the wind stops.

Her teeth are chattering. Thunder snaps a piece of the sky and then lightning follows, a minute later.

She doesn’t miss how Sarah startles at the sound. In fact, she steps closer.

“You’re going to get sick,” Rachel tells her. “Again.”

Sarah’s hair drips onto Rachel’s feet, down her leg.

“I’m not worried,” she replies. She bumps her hand into Rachel’s and then looks at her.

Her eyes are round, completely vulnerable.

_You told me it was over, Sarah._

Rachel swallows.

“I am,” she says. But she doesn’t move her hand. Sarah nudges it again.

_Delphine will stage my suicide. They might not even find a body. Sarah._

Another clap of thunder – Rachel’s the one who jumps this time. Sarah’s eyes flash gemlike in the lightning. Green and gold and brown under a clear, running river. She chances a smile.

The children must all be at the windows, watching the storm. This is what Rachel tells herself. This is what she tells herself to stop from pushing Sarah’s wet hair out of her face and kissing her, hard, the way everything inside her screams for her to do.

She wants it more than she wants to cry.

Sarah takes her hand. It’s cold. Ice-hot. An electric shock.

“Someone’ll come round,” Sarah says again, the pelting of the rain nearly drowning it out.

Rachel’s sure they will. A specialist or someone, sent out with a large umbrella to spread word of the evening activity. They’ll appear a sudden burst of color through the trees. Half-swallowed by the storm. And Sarah will let go of her hand.

Rachel squeezes it now, just to make sure she’s really holding it. She doesn’t dare look down.

She doesn’t dare ask, because she doesn’t want to hear it. Sarah saying that it really is over. That this is an apology. Or pity. Or that she read the whole book.

Sarah squeezes back.

“I like your hair like this,” she says as soft as she can before it can’t be heard at all.

Rachel’s sure she misheard it, actually, until Sarah reaches up with her free hand to touch the dripping tips. Her knuckle grazes Rachel’s neck. Rachel wonders if she’s looking for the teeth marks, which are the palest yellow of a bruise now. On the other side.

“It’s wet,” she says stupidly. As if Sarah can’t see that.

Sarah laughs and her fingers ghost the ends of Rachel’s hair again.

“It looks good,” she says. “All things considered.”

And then she seems to remember what she said at lunch on Saturday, letting go of Rachel’s hand and stepping backwards like this is her saying it all over again. If Rachel could take back the scavenger hunt, could take back that lie…

“There they are now,” Sarah says, and she points into the forest, where the soccer specialist comes running in an oversized orange raincoat.

He’s panting as he hops up onto the porch, but doesn’t seem to question why they’re standing out here or why Rachel hasn’t moved her hand from its position where Sarah let go. “Movie night,” he says breathlessly, and then takes off again.

Sarah disappears inside a second later.

Rachel bites her cheek until it bleeds, then spits red on the ground and goes inside as well.

 

* * *

 

The rain doesn’t ease up at all overnight, drowning the camp worse than last time as puddles take over full fields of grass and mud. Rachel treks to the morning meeting in the black waterproof windbreaker she was saving for a hurricane, hood up and brim out, her feet in the pair of rubber ankle boots she assured her father she wouldn’t need. They’re too large and bruise her toes. She won’t thank him.

“Obviously we won’t be outside today,” the director says to a room full of dripping staff, and Rachel isn’t the only one to roll her eyes.

Sarah isn’t here. Delphine sits in a tweed armchair on the other side of the room, her hair in perfect curls, no doubt ready to relay the message to both Sarah and her absent girlfriend.

A lot of counselors aren’t here, actually. Alison stands against a wall without Beth, and Mark sits uncomfortably on the couch with a partner-less Rudy. The specialist turnout is about sixty percent. Only Paul and Tony seem to have come together, either to keep each other company or not figuring out that only one representative per cabin was necessary in this weather. Rachel stands near them with her hood down. They haven’t noticed.

“We’ll have schedules printed at breakfast,” the director says. “They’ll be passed out.”

“Will we still be swimming?” Rudy asks sincerely, his shit-eating grin giving him away even though the director somehow misses it.

A roll of thunder shakes the tiny administrative building.

The director gapes. “I’m afraid not, son. With the safety concerns…”

Everyone tunes out, sending Rudy a dirty look. It costs them another ten minutes when they could easily be back in bed, staring at the ceiling while the children get ready. He loves it. Mark shakes his head.

Rudy’s still basking in his enjoyment at breakfast, forgoing any rain gear and shaking water off like a dog in the entrance to squeals from the children. It’s dark enough outside that the fluorescent lights of the mess hall give everyone’s skin the appearance of melting wax and Rudy seems to be not a human thing at all – his eyes are shadowed, nearly black, and the yellowed skin under them warns for everyone to use caution.

Rachel doesn’t know for sure, but it’s possible he’s having a worse summer than she is. Or maybe this is what he looks like at his best. She can’t tell.

Because it’s raining and everything feels terrible, the hot breakfast options are limited to oatmeal (lumpy, questionable) and runny eggs, sliding around plates as kids struggle to carry their trays with the squeaking-wet floor. Rachel opts for slightly burnt toast and an orange. She puts two coffees on her tray knowing what the day will bring.

“Just tell me we’re not playing board games again,” Olivia says at the table. Her black bangs are sticking straight up this morning. Miserably.

Even without the schedule Rachel can assure her they will be playing board games, because it’s raining and because it’s something Olivia hates and despite Rachel’s own resistance she’d like to believe this is the universe throwing her a small bone. Olivia’s been a thorn in her side all summer. At the very least she should suffer through an endless game of Cranium.

“Likely,” Rachel says.

She starts to peel her orange but it spikes pain up through her wrist, sharp, and so she drops it back onto her tray with a hole in it.

Sarah’s group fills the other end of the table. Rachel tries not to pay attention, but Sarah’s in another bin bag in lieu of a raincoat and seems just as despondent as everyone else, if not more. It’s upsetting.

“Maybe we’ll get to watch another movie,” Sierra says, mindlessly stirring her oatmeal.

Isabella W. sighs. “We’ve seen too many already.”

It’s true. They watched The Bee Movie last night, which really felt like scraping the bottom of the barrel. But poor animation is marginally better than karaoke night, which Rachel has a feeling might be the secondary option for another night of rain. She chews her toast. Drinks her coffee.

The director comes over with the updated schedule, looking slightly pained that Rachel’s sitting so far from Sarah when it means he has to walk that extra distance. But Rachel sat down first, so clearly she wasn’t the one to make this choice.

“We did the best we could,” he says as he hands it over.

Rachel frowns at the non-apology before looking at the sheet. It’s a _hell_ day.

“That son of a bitch,” she remarks as he walks away. Her girls are startled by the words she has never uttered before in her life, but it lessens the sting a little. Enough for her to unclench her jaw and finish her first coffee in three large sips.

A morning of board games with Delphine, Tony, and Alison, then arts and crafts with Seth and Rudy. In the afternoon, _four hours_ in the rec hall, rotating through Sarah and Paul and Beth. Doing what looks to be absolutely nothing. She contemplates how much coffee she can sneak out of the mess hall before anyone will call her on it.

“Oh,” Clementine says, alarmed, reading the sheet over Rachel’s arm. “Yikes.”

Marlow snatches the paper from Rachel’s hand and her face falls as she reads it.

Rachel starts in on her second coffee.

“We can’t like, opt out or something?” Marlow says. “I’d totally nap instead of going to art. I hope you know I’m willing.”

Rachel laughs, but it sounds aggrieved even to her own ears. “Please understand that if that was an option, I’d have you all in your beds right now.”

The only consolation is that Sarah seems equally distressed by her own schedule, which clearly can’t be as bad if Rachel has the gruesome twosome for second activity block _and_ has to spend unsupervised time with Delphine. But then Rachel has no idea where Beth will be all morning, and decides Sarah deserves it if she’s stuck with her.

Sarah’s drinking coffee at the same troubled pace as Rachel. It’s fitting. Not so long ago they’d be downing their drinks right beside each other, but this is where they are now. The canyon between them has a reason. Rachel can’t forget that.

She’ll see her in the rec hall, anyway. She’ll see her with Paul, who managed to get the best of her.

Maybe that kindness and quick exit was all she had to give and she gave it to him without thinking she should save any for anyone in the future. Of course she couldn’t have foreseen Rachel, because that would have meant foreseeing Beth. Rachel will never not be tied to that. It will always be messy, and Sarah can’t take her hand off the open wound because she’s terrified of it bleeding out.

Rachel should apologize. Stitch herself up. But it’s raining, and she wouldn’t know how if she tried.

“Maybe they’ll set the arts and crafts cabin on fire and we can all go home,” Raniyah says thoughtfully.

Everyone brightens a little at the idea, which is horrible. Rachel realizes they too might be having an awful summer, even without knowing about Beth. And that’s definitely her fault. She’s the one who’s supposed to be keeping their spirits high.

“Shall I bring marshmallows just in case, so we could roast them?” she says, making a pathetic attempt of a joke.

It lands, but barely. They return to their beige breakfasts. The polite smiles drop.

Rachel puts her head down, because like Sarah, she has nothing left to give.

 

* * *

 

It’s fine. Rachel spends her morning alone, but it’s fine. She should be concerned that she meets Seth and Rudy in arts and crafts with relief, but at its most basic the small cabin means there isn’t room for exclusion and she shares the corner table willingly.

(They aren’t Delphine, essentially. They aren’t a cold look that pulls everyone away and has Rachel picking at some puzzle with a lump in her throat.)

She’s close enough to learn the crazed look in Seth’s eyes isn’t a weaker version of Rudy’s but in fact an offshoot, something equally disturbing when they both begin to shred paper with their square fingers at the same exact moment. And yet she finds herself relaxing into her creaking chair. Because neither of them stare like Tony, like she put a knife in his back that might not even be related to Sarah or Delphine and is something she earned on her own.

Unnerving, she’d labeled it, an entire three tables away. Only marginally easier to stomach than the ice from Delphine.

She’d thought at a minimum Alison would talk to her, out of some misguided belief that sharing one moment outside of the night of Beth’s attempt made them closer to friends. But Alison sat on the floor with her girls, constructing a 3D replica of the CN Tower from a dilapidated box, not even glancing in Rachel’s direction.

Seth looks at her. She wants to say at least, but he doesn’t look away and his lower eyelid spasms.

“Yes?” she utters. She’s so tired.

At the tables her girls are elbowed in by all the boys and glue seems to be everywhere. If there’s a project they’re making, Rachel can’t tell. The art specialist has busied herself with paintbrushes in the sink and the only real sound is the downpour.

“Nothing,” Rudy says with a grin.

Seth looks away. Rudy stares. Paper snows down on the table from both their hands, like dandruff. (Rachel doesn’t look for the heart, but she sees it anyway, with a gash through it. Right under Seth’s arm.)

“Less than four more weeks,” Seth says, mouth not quite a smile but clearly meant that way.

She makes a noncommittal sound.

“You lost the scavenger hunt by what, ten minutes?” Rudy asks.

With a grimace, she shifts in her seat and it groans with the unfortunate sound of her jacket rubbing against itself.

Fifteen. But she won’t tell him that. It isn’t as if their girls were looking for them anyway, so Rachel can pretend she and Sarah weren’t at fault. For what they did in the woods. What should have been a bloodbath instead, so one of them could have at least walked away victorious.

“So much for girl power,” Rudy says when she doesn’t answer. He sneers. “You know we passed you a few times. Saw your clues.”

Seth makes eye contact again, for a second. “Saw a lot of things.”

A wave of heat flushes through her body and strikes down sharp in her stomach. Seth has no discernible expression, just the disturbed edge to his gaze, fixed now on the kids who are smearing glue across the tabletop.

What does she even say? All she can think is Sarah; Sarah’s teeth on her neck, Sarah burying something in her, against a tree where anyone could have caught them. Her cheeks are burning. She digs her fingernails into a groove on the table and lets out a short breath.

There are too many people in the room – thirty kids, four adults, if she can even count herself as that anymore – and they all seem to be talking, moving, shifting the hot air while rain pounds against the windows and blots out the light. They’re breathing _too_ much. Laughing, which sticks talons inside her chest and pries it more and more open.

“Easy,” Rudy says, and she realizes she’s nearly clawed off her nails.

Seth frowns, pitying.

“We didn’t tell,” he says. “I think everyone cheated. But there was a lifeguard hook on the other side of the fence.”

Her eyebrows go up in confusion, no doubt making her look even younger than she already feels.

“Where your one kid climbed the fence,” Rudy says.

“To get the clue,” Seth says.

She narrows her eyes at the both of them. “ _That._ ”

The absolute irritation washes out the near-heart attack and she clasps her hands together, bringing them to her forehead.

Idiots.

She’s sitting with idiots.

“You weren’t supervising,” Seth says like he’s Alison, and then he and Rudy grin at each other, some sort of joke between them. “Rachel Duncan, a rule-breaker.”

She knows neither of their surnames, which is comforting. (And, secretly, that they know her name at all brings its own comfort. For a moment she feels a little less invisible.)

“You could have been _disqualified_ ,” Rudy singsongs.

She rolls her eyes and scoots her complaining chair an inch closer to the wall to make a point. That this is all beneath her. That she isn’t grateful for their childish taunting because it’s more than anyone else will give her.

They bother her for another five minutes before moving on to a tangled up extension cord, clearly dumped in here to continue to be useless. Under their touch it unknots and she has to pretend she isn’t impressed.

They don’t want to be her friend; she’s just another easy target for their amusement. If it was any other moment in her life she’d crush them under a sharp heel like slimy cockroaches but as it is they’ve allowed her into their orbit and she has to recognize that she’s the cockroach in this situation. Barely clinging on with someone’s heel in her back.

Sarah’s, she could say. But she understands that it’s quite likely her own. And more importantly that this is what she deserves.

 

* * *

 

Paul brings Rachel coffee. This is how her afternoon starts.

“Saw you looking a little down at lunch,” he says as he hands it over, and behind him Sarah hurries her kids into the rec hall with another roll of thunder.

Rachel swallows twice, accepts the coffee, and avoids Sarah’s eyes. It isn’t hard. Sarah doesn’t acknowledge her at all.

Paul hangs around long enough for Rachel to utter a pained _thank-you_ , and then he leaves her sphere to puncture Sarah’s and Rachel’s tongue moves slowly in her mouth trying to figure out if there was anything she could have said to keep him from going. Because: her body in the open feels stripped bare, uncomfortably vulnerable.

Because: he bumps into Sarah’s side and their shared smile is completely genuine. Something familiar that Rachel could never procure.

Because: Rachel hates to be alone.

More than she hates having anyone around, and now she has too much space surrounding her and a coffee that burns her palms and every single one of her kids gravitates towards the counselors that can still figure out how to smile even after everything. Rachel despises it, how her girls crowd around the two of them so easily. How they look up with shining faces, as if staring into the sun.

“So what’s the plan?” Paul asks the lifeguard who’s fiddling with the sound system, hair wet from the storm.

Thirty kids slowly start to swarm the stage area. Sarah still doesn’t look over from the middle of it.

A second lifeguard bangs open the door with a mesh sack over his shoulder, dripping heavily on the linoleum, seemingly full of colorful fabric and the odd beanbag. He looks equally as defeated as the lifeguard on stage and Rachel’s sure they’re just biding their time before they can retreat to the specialist cabins, away from all the kids.

“We were just told to set up,” the lifeguard on stage says to Paul, eyeing the kids that approach.

“Someone else is bringing the wooden stuff,” the second lifeguard says, breathing heavily. Where he stands a puddle forms underneath him and everything in the sack appears to be soaked through.

Useless. Rachel shakes her head.

“We’re here all afternoon,” Olivia complains, and the lifeguards exchange a look.

“Good luck,” the second says to Rachel. She narrows her eyes and he quickly turns away to where Paul is attempting to help the first on stage without fully crouching down to his level.

The door bangs again: a third lifeguard arrives with waterlogged wooden contraptions carried half on his back, biblical. They’re folded and unfold as he sets them down and despite the shape of them being nowhere like a cross it’s what Rachel sees as he kneels to remove some tape – and then she lets out a long breath, trying to see literally anything else.

She’s never been one for religious imagery; twelfth grade English was tedious, with the symbolism, and she knows it mustn’t be good if it’s all she can conjure up now. Here, at a summer camp. Here in the rain. Here with Sarah ten feet away and damp and Rachel’s heart pulls in her chest.

“They’re on their way,” the third lifeguard says, a ball of tape in his hands. “Shouldn’t be long. Sorry.”

The two competent counselors meet his apology with cool _don’t worry about it_ s and _no problem, man_ s and Rachel yet again finds herself standing on the wrong side of an invisible line in the sand. Paul tilts his head at her in sympathy, but doesn’t move forward.

 _Okay_ , she thinks. _You’re who I could have been. If I’d been first, Sarah would still stand next to me._

She sips her coffee. Paul rounds up the kids for a circle game, loud enough to fill the room over the clatter on the tin roof. A minute later someone comes to guide them through the makeshift session and Rachel cements herself to a bench that is nowhere near where Beth ever materialized.

The gist of it is that no one had a plan, for how to fill this timeslot; wooden games from the annual carnival were pulled from storage and a dance area set up and the theme seems to be a generic _Party_ – it makes sense with thirty kids, Paul eager to assist. It’s the kind of thing that won’t feel so much like church babysitting (and Rachel _still_ can’t escape the religious slant on the day) and that the kids enjoy, and even as Rachel’s ears pop with the pressure of the storm and the pounding music she’s grateful for the chaos. It gives her something to slip under, a child in a sea of cold sheets.

(Across the hall Sarah slumps on another bench. It isn’t the Beth bench. Sarah has her eyes shut, but she still seems to be watching.)

The games are set up in some type of obstacle course that relies on the riskiness of Plinko to win – a homemade Plinko, plywood dropping slivers as it shakes with the music – and the kids cycle through with beanbags on their heads, something that only one of the non-burnt-out specialists could have come up with.

Rachel shivers in the rain-heavy air. Even inside, with her hands around something warm. No one looks over, though, for the full two hours, so no one sees her shake.

It’s exactly how she wants it to be.

She doesn’t glance to Sarah at all.

“You’ve really taken a beating, huh,” Paul says about ten minutes before he and Sarah leave, when it’s just him and Rachel on one side of the room and he lowers himself to her tiny bench.

She can’t imagine what part he’s seeing but with the cold last sip of coffee on her tongue it feels like all of it. The entire month of July, here, scorched into her skin.

“Three and a half more weeks,” she says in lieu of an actual response.

He seems to get it. His head dips in a nod, and the knee that’s closest to Rachel’s jiggles slightly. “You know, it’s easier when you have friends,” he says after a minute, like a knife.

He thinks it’s helpful. Rachel exhales through her nose, eyes on Sarah by the stage.

She’s dancing. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, and twirls them by the hand. In the heavy music and the heavier rain and the heat of all these bodies in a cramped summer space it seems like a mirage. Rachel lets it twist something inside her, and then she looks away.

“So I’ve heard,” she says. Hands on her thighs.

Paul clears his throat but says nothing. If he’s looking at Sarah as well Rachel doesn’t know, because she refuses to turn her head.

He goes not long after. He and Sarah take their kids and then it’s quiet, and Rachel’s girls all look at her, hairlines sweating, and she turns her palms to the ceiling. She has no idea. She’s sorry. She’s just as tired as they are.

Sahar gives her a forgiving smile, but that’s it. And even that feels far too kind.

 

* * *

 

Beth’s group brings a cold slap of wind with them as they hold the door, cutting Rachel to the bone.

“It’s more of the same,” the specialist says to Rachel as the kids all tumble in. “Sorry. We kind of exhausted our rainy day plans already.”

 _You were supposed to be better than this_ , Rachel nearly says, but she’s cold and cranky, and she’s been sitting on an unfamiliar bench for too long to have any shred of kindness left in her. She lets the specialist get away without a response. The kids swarm her again anyway, demanding information, and Rachel leans back against the wall.

Her posture is terrible these days. Her father would be so disappointed – she can almost hear his voice, chiding the slip of her shoulders, the slight slouch. She sinks farther just for that.

Out of the corner of her eye she can spot Beth creeping along the wall, moving across some invisible ledge as if the entire floor has opened up and is threatening to swallow her should she step out of line. Her hair is wet; it’s down again, ends curling. If Rachel squints it could look like Sarah. If she squints harder it could look like she just climbed out of the lake, so Rachel shuts her eyes, and Beth disappears from her mind.

It would be easy to pass the time if she had something to do with her hands – Sarah and Paul joined in with the kids, Paul obviously more enthusiastic than Sarah but Sarah trying nonetheless. Rachel can’t conjure up a universe in which that would be her. She can’t see the kids ever flocking to her, wanting her to be a part of their activities.

If she had a book, maybe. But Sarah took that too.

She picks at her nail polish. What’s left of it. It should bother her that it’s so chipped but in the buzzing orange light it seems appropriate for it to look this terrible. _It’s what you deserve_ , she thinks. And forces off another silver flake.

She used to paint them white; she’d forgotten. She had bottles lined up on her bookshelf, white after white after white, all of them that hospital shine. But it stained too easily. She thinks that’s why she stopped. She got blood on them once and that was the end of it.

Maybe she’ll change the color once the summer’s over. She’s always wanted to go darker, but her father’s events didn’t seem open to the kind of wound she wanted to paint on her hands, everyone in their grayscale dresses. She imagines showing up with the black nails Sarah had in the first week – down to the chips, down to the short, rough ends – and holding the stem of a glass with hands that shouldn’t be hers, smiling. No one would even come near her.

Maybe that should be her next line of defense. Then she won’t…

She picks off another flake of silver polish. It flutters as it heads to the floor.

“It’s cold by the door,” Beth comments, suddenly beside her, and Rachel’s back in the room with the kids throwing beanbags and hopping through hula hoops and screaming for no reason.

The door’s still half propped open, letting in a slight spray of rain that wets the floor in front of it. A child’s jacket sleeve is getting soaked on the closest hook. Someone should move it, but it won’t be Rachel.

Beth doesn’t sit. Her hands are twisted and knotted together just below her stomach, like she’s tied herself back up.

Rachel keeps her eyes level with Beth’s knuckles, because she knows exactly what awaits her in Beth’s eyes. _My mother killed herself_ , she hears again in her own pathetic voice. And Beth fitting it all together. Rachel shifts on the bench until her body is facing the stack of mats, away from Beth.

“Think the rain’ll stop by tomorrow?” Beth asks. She’s nervous. Rachel wants to strike it from her.

She wants someone to witness her violence. Fear her.

She just can’t stand the pity.

“No,” she says. Sharp.

Truthfully, she doesn’t know. Nor does she fully care. Beth seems to pick up on that, and a second later she’s moving on to another spot against the wall, where she can watch her kids build something with popsicle sticks and tape and shout at each other for their clumsy fingers.

A wobbly structure collapses on itself. Someone cries.

“Let’s do it again,” Beth says, soothingly, a hand on the girl’s back.

It’s a gesture Rachel wouldn’t think of on her own and she’s momentarily jealous that Beth can pull it out of nowhere when she’s only three weeks past a suicide attempt. Everyone seems to be able to do this: love the children and show them, all their gestures warm.

(Everyone seems to be able to do this. Come back, from all of it.)

 _You’re not really like them, huh,_ Raniyah said at the campfire the other night. She’d been watching the other counsellors crowd around one of the logs, everyone including Sarah, including Beth in a shadow, naturally coming together in a moment that had Rachel shrinking.

 _No_ , she’d wanted to say. _Yes_.

She wanted to ask why. She wanted to ask how, and what she could change.

But Raniyah only meant that they were all on one side of the fire and Rachel was on the other, and that they stood up and Rachel didn’t. Nothing more to it. Except everything.

Raniyah currently holds the hands of a nine year-old, one of Beth’s girls, and twirls her around and around in the small clearing by the speakers to the beat of some song Rachel will never recognize. Clementine dances as well, with Isabella Chang. The other Isabella has a beanbag on her head and is doing something with the hula hoops that looks like hopscotch.

Surely they should all be tired of this. It’s been two hours, and the only thing that’s changed is the company.

But: they’re laughing, in between shouting. They’re stir-crazy and using it. They’re on one side of the room with Beth and the specialist and Rachel is on the other. For a second she considers standing up and joining them. (Taking someone’s hand; trying to twirl them, even if it felt stiff. They’d smile at her. They would have to.)

It’s dark behind the windows, everything cloaked in rain. Through the murky glass the strange shape of trees shift in shadow and here in the light girls twist and wiggle and it’s all bending the same way. Beth has her hands locked with those of a small girl. The two of them in long sleeves, even now. Neither of them moving at the pace of the song.

Beth looks at nothing; they’re slow-dancing, feet lifting and falling ever so carefully. The girl has her head to Beth’s arm and her eyes are shut, and Beth continues to stare out at blank space. Rachel’s chest is tight just watching it (invasive, she thinks, but doesn’t stop) and then Beth’s mouth changes and the whole image is something else entirely: someone coming back from the dead, trying to make it up to the living.

Rachel blinks. Sees her mother. And then it’s done.

The guilt on Beth’s face is gone and the song doesn’t sound like her at all.

“You’d think they’d want to move on,” the specialist says, suddenly a few feet from Rachel’s bench.

Rachel doesn’t look up, because she knows she’ll see the specialist sweating, her own moment of weakness, a grotesque shine to her in the heartless light. Even the stubble on her thighs in Rachel’s line of sight has Rachel pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. How embarrassing. Everyone’s given up in such obvious ways.

“They’re happy,” she replies a second after. Realizing, maybe. “They’re just happy nothing’s changed.”

She can feel the strange look she’s being given, but nothing comes of it. The specialist moves on. The kids keep dancing.

Rachel stays exactly where she is and says not another word for a full hour.

 

* * *

 

The rain has given way to drizzle by dinner, everything clinging to the grey, and Rachel doesn’t miss the look Beth gives her in line that says _guess you were wrong after all._

Maybe she was.

Sarah eats with her girls as bodyguards, blocking Rachel from even really seeing her. Part of her wants to stand up and look her in the eye and tell her, but when she gets to that part of her thought it stops and that’s it. _Tell her_. Just that, as if whatever it is she feels she needs to relay isn’t important at all.

She could think of a few things, if pressed; she stabs a dubiously-cooked slab of chicken and frowns at the smudge of Sarah’s hands, all the way down at the other end of the table. _You still have my book, Sarah. You still won’t look at me. You held my hand on the porch and it’s like it didn’t even happen._

 _What do you_ want _from me?_

Sarah says nothing all meal, and Rachel lets Evie play with the bracelets up her wrist as she drowns in her own pained silence.

Maybe as a punishment she leaves her hood down on the walk to the rec hall for movie night and lets the rain make a nest of her hair. (Maybe it’s that she remembers Sarah touching the ends, approvingly.) The soft drizzle is cold on her neck (like teeth, she doesn’t think, but Sarah’s breath was always so warm) and she has a chill all through her spine as everyone settles in for an unwanted showing of Finding Nemo.

“I hate this movie,” Sierra complains as they stretch out on the floor, the projector working on the first try for once.

“You do?” Rachel asks.

She doesn’t care, but it seems like one of the less offensive ones they’ve had to suffer through this summer. At the very least she can identify with Marlin, chasing after someone who doesn’t want him in their life anymore. Sierra makes a face and pushes her hair off her forehead.

“Kind of,” she says. “I don’t know. I hate everything at camp.”

“You shouldn’t,” Rachel says, but it’s horribly empty even to her own ears.

She understands. This isn’t a summer that would make her want to return, if she was young and came here to make friends. Every inch of this place is dripping with loneliness. That any of her girls are sitting near each other is surprising when all they’ve been doing the past handful of days is bury themselves deeper in their despondency.

Sierra reluctantly heeds as the movie begins its plot but the sour look on her face doesn’t disappear.

They shift away from Rachel. Slowly, but by the time Nemo is snatched she glances up and realizes all ten of her girls are at least a foot away. Maybe it’s that they’re sitting in the back; she tells herself that, and her spine is sore against the edge of a bench as she presses into it. She tells herself they just want to see better even though half of them are focused on knotting embroidery thread or on their own dirty nails.

No one notices when she stands and moves along the edge of the room to the door, nor do they pay attention to the door opening and the gust of wind it brings. She slips out unseen. She stands on the small wet deck, alone.

It’s still drizzling. Without Sarah, she puts her hood up. The fabric against her ears feels too much like the scavenger hunt but she leaves it to suffer.

There’s a chance Sarah doesn’t know what Delphine said to Rachel and this is why she took her hand on the porch yesterday, touching her hair and smiling like she did. But it’s unlikely. Rachel’s understanding of friends is that they inform each other when they’re protecting them. And Rachel does understand that she’s something from which Sarah needs protection.

She’s a hurricane. All this time she was afraid of the storm in Sarah, and here it is in her instead.

Her cheeks are wet from the drizzle when the door groans open behind her; it’s entirely the rain, and not at all that she sniffs with it. She knows enough to know that it’s not Sarah who followed her and when Beth steps out with her own jacket unbuttoned Rachel merely shifts to make room.

“Underwater scenes make me a little…” Beth lets it hang, and then breathes out and says, “sick.”

“I bet,” Rachel says. It should have venom but it doesn’t.

Beth could have laughed either way, but without Rachel’s cruel intentions it feels like an interaction that anyone could have. Or, not anyone. Two people who are friends, perhaps. Two girls who stand on a slippery deck as the sun sinks out of a grey sky and look at nothing but the heavy trees.

It’s still an underwater scene. Here in the woods, they’re still underwater.

“I wanted to talk to you earlier,” Beth says, and then she’s close enough for Rachel to see her wrists.

The bandages are gone: it’s just the bracelets now, soaked and slightly bloodied. Rachel catches a glimpse of the edge of a scab and it looks angry. It seems to be screaming, as Beth rests her arms on the wet rail and doesn’t make a sound.

“When,” Rachel says, but she knows.

Beth twists her fingers around a pale knuckle like she’s contemplating breaking it. Rachel gives in and leans against the rail as well, and the wetness seeps cold through her sleeves. They could be having any kind of conversation right now. To anyone looking on, they’re just two girls in a colorless sunset. No one ever sees the blood.

“You seemed a little down,” Beth says.

Rachel’s lips pull into an unwilling smile. “I’m never down.”

She shuts her eyes, opens them. Breathes out through her nose. Beth’s head turns.

“Still. I wanted to apologize.”

“No,” Rachel says.

There’s a fight still left in her, it seems. She’d forgotten the feeling, of something hot kicking in the pit of her stomach. It’s lukewarm but the feet lash out and with Beth beside her it wants to grow. She thinks about it for a second; about how no one’s wanted to talk to Rachel at all. And then she shoves it back down.

Beth moves a finger along the wet rail, nail dragging a groove through the wood. Maybe it will scar.

“I didn’t know about your mom,” she says quietly. It’s as soft as the rain itself. Rachel watches it glide down the skin of their jackets. “I’m sorry.”

In another world, Rachel walks away. She kicks over a recycling bin. She screams.

“No one knows,” she says now.

She had a boyfriend who asked, once. He wasn’t her boyfriend the next day. She had the principal bring it up. These things felt small and yet dwarfed her until she couldn’t breathe. It feels ridiculous to be breathing now. It feels like it’s someone else having this conversation, not her. And Beth still hasn’t hit her with the pity.

“You know no one asked me,” Beth says. Her nail in the wood. “Why I did it. I thought you might…”

Rachel inhales, the air sharp in her lungs. And lets it out. “They don’t want to be told they don’t matter.”

“I know. Shit, I’m sorry. I just-” Beth’s shoulders go up and stay there, as if the shrug quit halfway. Rachel looks over and Beth’s eyebrow is shoved into place like she’s trying not to cry. It’s horrible. Rachel doesn’t know how to keep looking at her but she also doesn’t look away.

The rain picks up for three minutes in a slight pounding as if attempting to push all their words back into them and the front of Beth’s sweatshirt darkens with dampness where her jacket is left undone. She should do it up, but she ignores it. Rachel could help her but she doesn’t want to move. She can’t stop staring. It’s like a black hole, and soon all that will be left of Rachel is a dry mark where her arms had been on the rail.

 _What’s it like to come back from the dead?_ she wants to ask.

She pictures Beth turning, the eyebrow finally dropping into place. _I don’t think I’ve really come back yet._

“They’ll never trust you again,” Rachel says with her jaw too tense.

“I know,” Beth says. “I deserve that.”

Rachel runs her teeth along her top lip in a moment of contemplation, trying to figure out if she’s brave enough to say it. And then Beth’s eyebrow finally falls and her face falls with it and Rachel has to say it because in this minute she’s not a monster. Not really.

“No. You deserve to be happy.” She says it and touches a hand to Beth’s back, and in what feels like a gesture meant for someone else Beth lets herself accept it. 

 

* * *

 

Friday morning, in the fog, Sarah goes to the first staff meeting in well over a week. It has nothing to do with Rachel; she’s been exhausted, and it’s only that someone comes round to let them know this meeting’s mandatory that has her trudging through the mud in her pyjamas.

Her hair’s unbrushed. Mascara flecks her cheeks. She falls into a tweed chair in the back of the room and doesn’t glance at Rachel in the opposite corner at all.

Every meeting this summer has supposedly been mandatory, Sarah tells no one, as Delphine and Cosima are near the front on a couch, but the director seems to really mean it today – by the time the door shuts, even the specialists have arrived and there’s barely any room to stand. (A lifeguard perches on Sarah’s armrest, apologetically, but she can’t begrudge him this tiny seat. Not when everyone in here looks ready to collapse.)

“The administrative staff are walking the grounds,” the director says over a low murmur of conversation that dies out as he climbs onto a stepstool. “Should the campers need anything, they’ll be around.”

Sarah’s head turns involuntarily, and beyond the lifeguard’s freckled thighs Rachel’s propping herself up with a fist, maybe even more tired than Sarah. She could blend into the bulletin board behind her, she’s so pale.

It sends static racing down Sarah’s spine.

“Now, these past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind,” the director goes on, launching into a tiny speech that evades what happened and mostly amounts to _I’m sorry you’re all so distressed but it’s affecting the kids_.

Of the people who know, it’s clear on their faces. Of the people who don’t, Sarah can see questions, but not a single person looks to Beth. Not even Alison as she knots the drawstrings of her hoodie with Beth half in her lap. (It’s a scene Sarah doesn’t want to have noticed, the intimacy a forest fire in her chest, but even from across the room the necessity is palpable. Maybe the lack of space or sitting room or- she doesn’t think about it, but Beth has her fingers locked around her wrist. Tight. And Alison keeps tying knots.)

“We had eight phone calls home last night,” the director says. “Triple that in the past week. One camper tried to run away and I’ve had countless complaints. I know it isn’t anything you’re doing-”

At this, Rudy clears his throat, but the art specialist punches his shoulder and he subdues.

“-but it’s a concern. It’s too much. And it stops today.” The director’s hands are pressed together almost like a prayer. In the corner, Rachel has her eyes shut.

“We’ve been doing our best to keep them in high spirits,” Alison says, her hand in the air, Beth shifting in their shared armchair like she’s trying to distance herself from this.

“I know, and I appreciate it,” the director says. He too refuses to look at Beth, either out of courtesy or some sort of fear. Maybe it’s that Beth’s sleeves are still too short; that the bracelets are stained, and no one will call her on it.

Sarah wonders how many people know at this point. She can’t see Paul, but she imagines him with his eyes fixed anywhere else. Delphine staring at the floor. Cosima picking at her nails. And Alison whose hand hasn’t come down, like she’s still waiting to be called upon, eyes so forcefully sincere they’re shining, unable to even let Beth sit with her without crumbling underneath her.

“What we need is a good old Down Day,” the director says, turning on his stool to address the room. “No camp, no programming. I’ve organized a few games and events but I’m counting on you to bring your talents to the table. Consider it… hitting the restart button. A day to go back to what makes this place the haven that it is.”

He pauses as if he’s expecting chatter to take over, but everyone remains absolutely silent in their bewilderment. A few sets of eyes drop to the floor. Someone coughs.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Alison finally says, as her arm drops.

Beth hides a smirk behind her hand, twisting towards the wall out of embarrassment or disbelief or yet another feeling of hers that Sarah will never be able to name.

“See it as therapy,” the director replies. “We play a few games, talk about feelings, try a little yoga. Thanks again, Hillary.” The dance specialist returns his terse smile. “It’ll be a day to decompress, to help the kids work through their homesickness and other feelings. Everyone brings something to the table. No one has to go home early.”

This time the chatter rises up, everybody turning to each other to comment, but Sarah’s still frowning at the director’s gleaming head, trying to figure out if that last line was meant to sound like such a threat.

“I heard you’re the queen of braids,” the lifeguard on her armrest says, interrupting her thought. “Maybe you can run, like, a beauty station.”

He shrivels as he becomes the new target of her frown.

“Or maybe a fight club,” she says in response, and he’s on his feet with a squeak of an apology in mere seconds, vacating the armrest to slink over to a cluster of other water-related specialists.

Although it’s quiet, she definitely hears a laugh in Rachel’s corner. Bold move from the girl who’d be the first in the ring if Sarah had her way.

“We’ll pass around sign-up sheets at breakfast,” the director says before everyone leaves, stepping down from his stool with more dignity than he should be allotted. “Everyone will get the final schedule after inspections.”

The room vacates slowly, everybody essentially shifting themselves towards the door, but despite the glacial pace Sarah manages to avoid Rachel and catch up to the one person who might actually have some information with how long she’s been here.

Alison seems surprised as Sarah falls into step beside her, but adjusts nonetheless. Beth, on her other side, pretends not to notice.

“Have you done this before?” Sarah asks as they trudge down the path. “Anything like this?”

It feels entirely thrown-together, but so does half the shit they apparently plan around here. She wouldn’t be too surprised to find out it’s from some giant binder of backup ideas the director’s been carting around for the past ten years and is only now deciding to test out; in case of emergency break glass, or whatever, and this is the fire. Flood. Beth tugs on her sleeves.

Alison’s shoulders rise up, polite, and the hand that hangs near Beth gets shoved into a pocket. “Honestly? No. Not at all. I think it’s…”

“Some kind of desperation,” Beth interjects. And then she’s quiet.

Sarah can’t catch her eye, but Alison looks over and they’re all thinking the same thing. No one’s going to mention it. No one will smash that window. But they walk together all the way until the path splits, the three of them in their pyjama pants, and as Sarah heads left Alison’s hand comes out of her pocket and wraps itself around Beth’s.

Just like that. Forgiveness.

 

* * *

 

No one tells the kids until after the clipboards have made their rounds, and then the director taps a glass and they all sort of stare at each other in their confusion like this might be some punishment in disguise.

Sarah gets it. Mostly because it turns out her only talent _is_ braiding, and while Cosima and Delphine quickly put themselves down for an hour of cool science experiments Sarah can only hover between _art therapy_ and _beauty_ before snagging the only one that won’t make the kids walk out at her obvious lack of artistic skills.

“So, basically face-painting and temporary tattoos and five-minute hairdos,” the director explains, going over her choice, before asking Rachel what she and Alison are planning for arts and crafts.

It’s nice to return the wicked laugh Rachel gave her at the meeting.

Rachel rolls her eyes in response, and the sheer normalcy of the exchange has Sarah’s chest hurting.

“It’s only an hour and a half,” Madeleine tries to console, assuming this is about the beauty tent. “I’ll bring you cold water if you want.”

Sarah remembers yet again that this day’s only happening because they’ve all been such shite counsellors and even Madeleine can’t figure out how to react to Sarah’s head hitting the table. Two weeks ago they’d put paper in her hair or something. But they all just leave her, unsure and uncomfortable and it’s entirely her fault.

The beauty tent is set up in the middle of the field, not too far from Paul and Beth’s fortune telling tent where Paul has a cheap pink scarf wrapped around his head and Beth sits as far from him as possible. They’re the last people Sarah would choose to tell kids about the future, but it’s marginally better than Rachel’s outcome, twenty feet east, laying out art supplies with Alison under a tent that seems to drop an inch every ten minutes.

“Not like _that_ ,” Alison snaps, audible even from here. Rachel sighs and her hands are up and Sarah can’t help but snort.

She doesn’t know who she pities more: Rachel or Alison. _Enjoy her_ , she projects at Alison, pulling her feet up onto her plastic folding chair to get a little more comfortable. Rachel’s maybe two seconds away from snapping herself, and it isn’t Sarah’s problem. For once. Rachel isn’t Sarah’s problem.

“What do you think,” Tony says as he drops into the chair next to her, bringing with him a pile of temporary tattoos. “Dream Team reunited?”

Sarah looks away from the art tent. “What?”

“You n’ me. We’ve been good together, yeah?” He grins, tongue between his teeth.

She still hasn’t told him about Rachel’s book. She probably never will, because she doesn’t know how to put it into words. But he hasn’t asked. And he’s the only person who doesn’t come with his own cloud of misery, all things considered, and he looks at her now like this summer is completely normal. Like the little tents scattered across the field aren’t the first part of a last ditch effort to keep the campers from pulling out early.  

“Yeah,” she says, and decides not to ask why he signed up for beauty. He’s examining the tattoos with that little smile of his and all she can do is laugh.

Fifteen minutes later she learns two things: the first, he can match her braid for braid, only needing a moment to watch before whipping out the same fancy design to all the kids’ delight. (“What?” he asks, catching her staring. “I have a sister.”) The second, Rachel has faster reflexes than anyone expected, as the whole art tent collapses on itself and she catches the roof before it takes down five kids and a picnic table.

Alison lets out the angriest iteration of _OH, CRUMB BUNNIES!_ that the world has ever heard and Rachel, poised as ever, peels out of the canvas with only one strand of hair out of place.

“That’s some ninja shit right there,” Tony says to the kid whose face he’s painting, and the kid nods gravely, half a dragon across her cheek.

Sarah’s heart does a funny twist as she tries to keep the Dutch braid from slipping through her fingers. The boy in her chair smiles at her like it’s some big joke at either Tony’s cursing or the tent collapsing and Sarah smiles right back the same way, shaking her head.

Rachel and Alison are forced to continue their art session in the hot sun after a few lifeguards try to and then can’t fix the wonky pole situation but it doesn’t seem to faze Rachel in the least – she’s still expressionless, still handing chalk pastels to kids who ask and only slipping on a pair of sunglasses when she catches Sarah looking.

About an hour later she passes Sarah’s tent with the sunglasses lowered, slightly, and her face is entirely neutral. “See you at yoga,” she says. And that’s it.

Tony whistles as he cleans his hands on a wet wipe.

“Don’t even,” Sarah warns.

If Delphine and Cosima’s tent was closer she might find one of them to use their shoulder as a place to bang her head but their tent’s on the other side of the field, all the way over by the water pump. So all she can do is glance to the tent next to her and make uncomfortable eye contact with Beth before Paul tries to intercept and Sarah groans and moves on.

Just before they finish cleaning up to head to yoga, she lets Tony give her a little temporary tattoo. It’s a snarling tiger.

“For like, bravery or some crap,” he says.

It’s on her bicep. He takes a matching one for himself and she decides she loves it.

 

* * *

 

Half the kids with long enough hair are sporting Sarah’s braids at yoga – the other half have Tony’s, and they all manage to look like some kind of hippie cult on their yoga mats as the dance instructor leads simple moves from a few risers in the middle of the soccer field.

Sarah follows for the first ten minutes, her body complaining at each stretch. But then she watches Alison and Beth slip away towards the cabins and she deserts her own mat to go sit on the bleachers.

She’s half expecting Rachel to come join her, as Rachel stares from the edge of the field in a lazy Downward Dog, but her earlier comment seems to be the extent of her nerve and she doesn’t budge. Paul’s the one who drifts over; yet another visor adorning his head. Rachel watches him settle and then finally looks away.

“Okay if I join you?” he asks as he sits, quiet even though they’re a good fifteen feet from the nearest kid. Sarah shrugs and he lets out a low groan, hand on his back. “Yoga’s gonna kill me.”

The dance instructor has everyone balancing on one leg now, a sea of wobbling storks. Rachel is a statue. Completely still. Carved of stone.

“What, you not big on releasing tension?” she asks with a teasing smile.

He squints at her like he’s not sure how he’s supposed to take it and she remembers their history before realizing she’d _forgotten_ their history, that for a moment it was just the two of them and Beth, the two of them and Beth’s body in the lake, and his presence was more of a comfort than the barrel of guilt she’s been carrying all year.

“Sarah Manning,” he chastises, and she laughs. Head back. Until he’s chuckling too.

Who would’ve thought they’d end up something like friends.

“Alison tried to get Beth and me to do yoga once,” he says, expression jokingly pained until the mirth disappears.

They’re both staring at the field, and Beth and Alison are gone. Maybe he watched them leave too; maybe that’s why he’s here, because Sarah nearly understands. She puts a hand on his knee that only means empathy and it really says something about this summer that she doesn’t have to worry about how he takes it.

“Mate,” she commiserates.

His mouth is half a smirk, covering the rest of his sentiment. “Yeah. It went as well as you’d imagine.”

She pictures Alison in magenta and Beth at her side, maybe in some equally hideous yoga getup no doubt borrowed from Alison, and Paul somewhere behind them, forever trying to catch up. Or it was someone’s living room and Alison had a DVD and Paul was the only one not laughing. She can only imagine it as Beth trying, time and time again, and she doesn’t know why. Maybe because it’s Alison. Maybe because she gets it, and Rachel’s watching the bleachers again, and Sarah’s chest is full of peroxide.

“She asked to do that fortune telling thing with me,” he says a minute later, quiet.

Beth didn’t even look at him. But she asked.

“How is she,” Sarah says so only he can hear.

“I don’t know,” he says. He has a hand on his forehead, underneath the brim of his visor. “I still love her. I still…”

“I know,” Sarah says.

He looks over, helpless. “I think she still loves me. But she hasn’t even… Am I supposed to ask her about it? Am I allowed to- Do we just ignore it?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah says, as helpless as him.

She wants to have a concrete answer. She wants to be able to say _yes, Paul, she loves you and she’s waiting for you to want to know, and she’ll tell you everything and that will be it. That’ll be the end of it._ But Beth’s off with Alison. Paul jerks his shoulders. Sarah exhales.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”

She looks out at the field again. Everyone’s down like corpses on their rows and rows of mats.

“I mean, who else is there to dump it on?” she says with a shrug.

He sighs and she smiles, sympathetic, and they both watch the kids lose all signs of life like this really was a battlefield after all. But they seem better. A bit. And he bumps his shoulder into hers, a gesture of gratitude.

“You know it goes both ways, right?” he says, turning so he can really look at her. “If there’s anything you ever need to dump. I’m your dumpster.”

“God,” she says, laughing.

But she knows he means it, and she thanks him. Genuinely. She really does appreciate it.

He sticks around after yoga to walk to the fire pit with her, peppering the trudge through the forest with the worst jokes she’s ever heard (“Did you hear about Jock Strap’s father? He was a real ball handler.”) and he’s equally as excited as she is to see a mid-morning snack handed out as the camp piles onto logs and sit-upons.

“All right, granola bars!” he cheers, and catches two that a lifeguard tosses over. One he hands to Sarah and the other is open in less than a second and in his mouth like he’s never seen food before.

Sarah finds herself laughing again, chest light in a way she feels almost guilty about. It’s clearly a coping mechanism but Paul really knows how to pull a person up from their gutter – maybe for his own benefit, to pull himself up too. ( _I get it,_ she wants to tell Beth. _Why you stayed_. But there isn’t a Beth to tell.)

“You’re ridiculous,” she says to Paul, weaving through the kids to where Delphine and Cosima have saved a bench, and he grins at her with his mouth full.

Delphine scoots over so the two of them can sit, her expression clearly acknowledging Paul’s presence and letting Sarah know that she’ll be kind and won’t ask, and they settle in with their granola bars, everyone equally focused on food and not that they’re forming the horrifying start of a sharing circle.

Sarah realizes about two minutes later when it’s too late to run, but it’s fine. She has Paul on one side and Delphine on the other, and Rachel’s on the ground with her kids and Beth still isn’t here at all.

Delphine’s unamused expression alone is enough for the director to overlook their entire bench; any feelings they’re supposed to be sharing won’t be uttered in this crowd.

Sarah only has this, anyway: a small cloud in her chest that’s trying to absorb the corrosion, which is as close to hope as she’s ever come. She could tell Rachel. She could say a lot of things. But at the end of the day Rachel’s in the dirt, silent, and Sarah has three people who would listen if she wanted them to.

 

* * *

 

The afternoon starts with a surprise Dutch Auction and ten minutes for every cabin to grab whatever they can fit in a bed sheet to haul back to the soccer field.

Sarah’s only done this once before, when she was still in the middle of the Paul thing last year, but it’s one more time than Rachel, who suddenly becomes a long-distance track star as they all run their groups to the cabins and beats Sarah there by a good minute.

“What _is_ this,” is all Rachel says when Sarah catches up, panting on the porch with a hand to her chest.

Sarah falters as her kids push past her and a full explanation bubbles up in her throat but then Julisa snatches Rachel’s arm and tugs her into the cabin, saying something about _the enemy_ , and Sarah’s alone on the steps as her kids shriek from inside.

Ten minutes later they’re all running again with bed sheets bundled between them and Rachel doesn’t even look back.

“We ransacked your room,” Quinn divulges as every cabin is assigned a spot in a giant horseshoe, one large bed sheet of crap per group. “Hope that’s okay.”

Sarah glances at her group’s sheet – it’s actually Madeleine’s (which isn’t surprising, as she’s the only one who consistently makes her bed) and there are definitely a few of Sarah’s things bulging out the sides: bottle of lotion, a bra, Rachel’s book.

She doesn’t have the words to explain why the book isn’t something they should have touched so she juts out her jaw and takes a seat in their clump and just hopes Rachel doesn’t notice.

 _I had no part in it_ , she’ll say if Rachel asks. But Rachel won’t.

She probably won’t even look; her back’s to Sarah, focused on her own group as the returning kids explain the rules of a Dutch Auction despite the director trying to get everyone’s attention to do just so.

He finally manages as Beth’s group shows up last, sitting carefully between Paul’s and Alison’s. Then he’s on a tiny crate and has a megaphone, and everyone has their eyes on him, and he brings everybody up to speed with a smile that truly nearly manages to hide the desperation.

“All right!” he says. “Welcome to the Dutch Auction! Our lovely specialists are your judges, and they’ll decide if any of your items count for the item I will read off my super secret list.”

The paper in his hand is brandished, the two groups closest to him craning their necks to peek despite it being folded in half. Sarah exchanges a look with Paul on the other side of the circle. _Good luck_ , he mouths. _Up yours_ , she mouths back.

“None of your items will be taken from you, but simply counted for points,” the director continues. “The cabin with the most points at the end of the list wins the auction.”

A kid from Rudy’s group calls out an obnoxious, “What do we win?” that’s met with the same answer for every game: just you wait. But then the art specialist passes by and crouches conspiratorially, between Sarah and Rachel’s groups.

“I have it on good authority that cabin points might be involved,” she stage whispers, loud enough for Alison to perk up at the tip of the horseshoe.

Madeleine’s eyes go wide and she and Naomi grin at each other.

“I swear to god, if we _don’t_ win…” Madeleine threatens, looking around at the group.

Afsheen raises her crossed fingers. Sarah suppresses a snort.

Even with whatever points they might get from this, there’s no way they’ll surpass Alison’s triple-digit point tally. It’s the volunteering – Sarah couldn’t get her kids to voluntarily clean if she bribed them.

“Ready?” the director calls out a second later, and the art specialist gives Rachel a wink that jimmies something hot and uncomfortable under Sarah’s skin.

“READY,” the campers shout back.

Everyone unfolds their sheets. Alison sits up on her knees, eager. Beth, at the back of her circle of kids, pulls something out of the grass. Rachel fixes Sarah with a cold, hard look.

“For two points,” the director says, as the specialists pull out their notebooks, “an extension cord!”

There’s a mad dash through the sheets and then one triumphant cry, from Rudy’s group, as a bright orange extension cord is thrust into the air. Everyone else groans. (“Unbelievable,” Cosima says to Tony.) The soccer specialist makes a note in his notebook.

“A point for every striped sock!” the director says.

The kids and several counselors start to rifle through their items before a few people realize they can check their own feet and then multiple socks and feet are being waved in the air. Quinn snatches Sarah’s left foot out from under her, tossing her shoe into the grass so the specialist can see the red stripes.

“Tally that!” Quinn cries.

The art specialist laughs and marks down seven points, which is one more point than Rachel gets and has Quinn shouting her delight at Sierra and Clementine. Sarah should reprimand her but it’s Rachel’s kids, and they’re mostly unfazed, so she ignores it.

“A soap dish,” the director announces next.

Three points are given across the camp. Daniela pouts at their lack of foresight.

“Anything with a Canadian flag on it.”

The camp racks up a surprising eighteen points, and it’s Cosima’s turn to pout as her kids wave an American flag bandana in her face.

“A visor.”

Paul cheers. Sarah shoots him a dirty look.

“An astonishing _four points_ if your counselor is going out with another staff member!” The director grins like he might actually know what goes on at camp, as a sea of jeering rises up.

Cosima and Delphine reach across their kids to high-five each other. Paul looks to Beth, who shrugs. Their kids clap anyway. Mark hesitates, something about Gracie and the past weekend, and after a moment’s discussion it’s written down.

“Come _on_ ,” Sameera says to Sarah, thankfully not looking at anyone else after that.

For a second Sarah’s sure Rachel glances over but she’s just saying something to Evie with no discernable expression.

The director gets everyone’s attention again and calls out, “ten points if your counselor is _not_ going out with another staff member!”

Everyone essentially loses their shit.

Sarah takes the moment of chaos to mouth a quick _thanks_ to Rachel, who, for the first time in the daylight, noticeably flushes. It’s two minutes of an upper hand. Two minutes Sarah cherishes, and then they’re moving on to hairbrushes and things stolen from the mess hall and more points are added to everyone’s book.

To Madeleine’s utter delight, friendship bracelets are called next and their cabin racks up an unheard of twenty-six points. It makes up for her being responsible for Rachel’s fifteen points because it’s on Madeleine that Rachel knows how to make a damn bracelet, but they all decide to let it pass without comment.

(Beth’s cabin gets nine. Sarah very briefly sees kids counting Beth’s wrists, their tiny fingers careful, and swallows down nausea. Four points right there. Sarah’s so sorry.)

Sarah’s group is in the lead right until the very end, when the director says a point for every key and Seth pulls out the biggest fucking key ring known to mankind. It rivals maintenance; Seth says something about being a military kid, about houses, and Sarah loses by three. Bloody. Points.

“We did our best,” Raya consoles as everyone packs up their sheets, a hand on Sarah’s arm.

Sarah halfheartedly grabs her bra from Quinn’s grasp and ignores Rachel’s eyes following it, like she’s somehow scandalized by the black strappy thing she’s already had her hands all over. Sarah grabs the book, too, and meets Rachel’s gaze head on.

Whatever she’d planned to say before dies away. Rachel’s shoulders are up.

“Do you want it back?” Sarah hears herself saying.

Their twenty kids are suddenly all watching, eyes on the book that Sarah holds out into empty space. Of course Rachel won’t close the gap between them; she just stands there, half turned, her eyebrows up.

“Only if you’re finished,” Rachel eventually responds.

A whole chasm has grown between them. The kids fall in, one by one, and all glance up at Sarah’s outstretched hand. It very slowly retracts.

“Not yet,” she says. “But soon.”

Rachel stares a second longer, and then says, “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

The end of Down Day: a pyjama walk after dinner, through the forest, with hot chocolate. Everyone’s soaked in bug spray. Sarah has on pyjama pants and an oversized tie-dye shirt from last year and there’s Rachel, beside her but not, in a satiny grey sleep set.

It should be illegal to wear those little pyjama shorts, Sarah doesn’t say. It should be illegal for Rachel to keep an even pace four feet to Sarah’s left, and just a step behind, like a shadow Sarah can’t shake. But they’re all trudging at the same slow rate like a funeral march to the heart of the woods. All holding steaming Styrofoam cups that could use a little more milk.

And they’re singing, softly. A song about goodbyes.

Apparently the day accomplished what the director wanted – he had the staff come over in small groups at dinner, a debrief of sorts and some instructions on the days to follow, and he was pleased with what he’d seen. Kids expressed a lot of their fears in the sharing circle. A couple cried during yoga.

“Homesickness, mostly,” he’d said. “A little bit of our stresses.”

Sarah was close enough to hear the speech he gave to everyone, at the end of her long table. So she knew what he tacked on when it was just her and Beth and Delphine right in front of him. The careful, _I hope it was therapeutic for you as well_. Sarah couldn’t bring herself to glance at Beth, but she did manage to bump her hand. And Beth bumped back.

Beth walks with Alison a little up ahead, in that grey Henley and a pair of cotton pyjama shorts. Her sleeves are pulled down over the bracelets. She seems like she wants to reach over and slip her hand into Alison’s but she doesn’t, and Sarah watches the hand fumble for far too long before it disappears into a pocket. At least she’s done avoiding Alison, Sarah decides. But Paul’s behind somewhere walking alone and this situation still always lands with someone in the dirt.

“Are you coming back next year?” Quinn asks, quietly, in a nightgown at Sarah’s side.

The forest is light enough for Sarah to see her face, veiled in soft grey, framed by that raging mess of curls and knots that never seems to stop moving. In another life she could be Medusa. But that would mean Sarah would be stone, as she looks her in the eye right now. And Quinn’s so genuine. Sarah almost doesn’t recognize her.

“Do you want me to?” she replies.

Coming back would mean returning with new ghosts, new regrets. The risk of Rachel returning as well, maybe finally admitting she loves the kids. Sarah tries to picture the two of them a year older, on the porch, staring each other down with the whole of it still wedged between them unspoken. It _can’t_ end like this. But Sarah can’t come back to another year of suffering either.

“I mean, you sucked last year, from what I saw,” Quinn says, and on her other side Rachel falls a few steps behind to answer Marlow’s question. “And then you came back and you were better. So, next year…”

“I’ll be even better?” Sarah supplies.

Quinn gives her a nod.

“Yeah, hopefully,” Sarah says, consciously not answering Quinn’s question.

Rachel and Marlow are even farther behind, focused on something by a snarling oak tree. Moss, maybe. Rachel’s clearly not a nature girl but she’s Marlow’s counselor, so that’s the role she’s playing right now. Five weeks ago Rachel wouldn’t have stopped. Sarah’s… proud. She’s surprised to find she’s proud.

Quinn sips her hot chocolate, grimacing at the watered-down flavor that plagues them all.

“Well, if you do, maybe next summer when you’re sneaking out at night you can come visit me. ‘Cause I’ll be at the senior camp. And all those counselors suck.” Quinn thinks on it for a second and then adds, “Rachel can come too, if she wants.”

Sarah flounders in surprise and whips her head around to see who’s listening, grateful to find all the nearby kids are in their own discussions or lost in thought and don’t seem to have caught Quinn’s commentary. Quinn grins at Sarah in a way that says she knows exactly what she’s thinking. _You’re not as clever as you think, Sarah. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve noticed._

“Uh,” Sarah finally manages to pull together, “I’m not sure Rachel’s coming back next year, monkey.”

Quinn shrugs, her smile confident. “I think she will. You did, didn’t you?”

 _It’s more complicated than that_ , Sarah thinks, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe at its core, it’s Rachel and a mistake that she believes is the end of the world, something she did because she’s running from her own shit, and she thinks facing it will only make it worse.

Maybe it’s Rachel still struggling to ever believe in herself. And she’ll come back, and she’ll be a year older.

She’ll make different mistakes. Bigger mistakes.

Last year won’t be anything to her anymore.

Rachel’s finally caught up to where she was before, walking with Marlow and Evie, and she seems calm in their quiet conversation. She sips her hot chocolate without the grimace. She says _yes, I do find it interesting_. And Marlow smiles. Heard.

Quinn watches her too; watches Sarah watch her.

“She’s your friend, right?” she asks. It’s just a small question. It doesn’t even have Quinn’s usual agenda behind it.

Maybe it’s the forest, or that they’re all in their pyjamas and walk like the end of the road really is just that. Maybe it’s the sun that pulls out of the sky at an alarming August rate. The encroaching dark. The shadows that take Quinn’s face and break it in two, half there, half gone. And do the same for Rachel. And Sarah, most likely, as well.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “She’s my friend.”

Rachel hears her. She doesn’t look, but the smallest smile blooms on her lips. And Sarah hopes she feels the apology.

She’s going to give her back the book. She can’t keep holding it hostage, thinking that might change the meaning or make Rachel go back to seeking her out in the dark. It isn’t healthy to keep clutching it like this – all of it. Sarah knows that.

But there’s still that part of her; still a tiny piece that doesn’t want to let go, because that means the end of it. And then she’ll have to choose: make Rachel confront it, or walk away.

And she knows, that this is something Rachel will ignore for the rest of her life. If it’s up to Rachel, it’s buried deep and under iron. So then letting go means walking away. And then, mostly, it’s this: the truth is that Sarah can’t.

All she can do is walk beside her, four feet over, a slight step ahead.

 

* * *

 

Rachel gets her book back on the Monday. She returns from dinner and it’s on her bed, centered on the neatly-made bedclothes with a few more scuffs on the cover.

She looks for any sign that it was with Sarah all that time, a thumbprint or signature, a lingering scent, even flips through a few pages to see, absurdly, if Sarah commented, but the book remains anonymously dirty with the same old ghosts inside.

At the campfire, Sarah makes no motion that she returned anything. As if she assumes (correctly, but still) that it’s been safely found and that’s the end of it. It’s only as Rachel stares into the hungry flames that she considers _how_ Sarah managed to return it, when she was in the mess hall all dinner and didn’t seem to get to the cabins significantly earlier than Rachel. The book just appeared. Just reappeared.

She wants to ask.

She doesn’t. She wants to say… something, _I’m sorry_ , or _thank-you_ , or _I didn’t think you considered me a friend_ , but Sarah remains a log away and Rachel holds her tongue to the warm roof of her mouth until the feeling passes.

The book is hers again, so it shouldn’t matter. Whatever happened to it when she wasn’t looking doesn’t make a difference.

But then there she is Wednesday morning, book rigid in her hands, Sarah stretched out on the dock beside her as their girls swim laps in the lake. _Seriously, it’s not worth it_ , Sarah had said when Rachel moved to join them in the water. And then silence. And then two girls on their towels, holding their skin to the sun.

Sarah’s face is half sunglasses that Rachel can’t see through; she’s in a black bikini top, black bottoms cut like shorts. Rachel doesn’t stare, but.

She doesn’t stare. She fixes her eyes on the open pages of her book. _He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him…_ She doesn’t stare; she doesn’t wonder what Sarah made of it, of any of it, because it doesn’t matter, and she doesn’t ask if Sarah understood because she knows. Sarah had to. There isn’t any other option.

She drags her eyes back to the start of the line until she can taste the shape of the words – _he admits_. Sarah turns on her towel, her back textured from the material. _A certain point. On a curve._

But she _can’t_ – she can’t take it in, with Sarah right there next to her. Her towel six inches from Rachel’s towel. Every ridge of the dock underneath Rachel’s stomach presses into her and it’s too much and she shuts the book and stands, startling both Sarah and the lifeguard who’s perched on the floating dock with his red plastic whistle.

Sarah’s sunglasses glance at Rachel. The metal rim glints in the sun, curious.  

“Would you… watch the book for me?” Rachel asks, bending to set it near Sarah, who answers with a careful nod.

It’s precarious on the dock; too close to the water. But Rachel trusts her.

“Thank-you,” she says, and Sarah nods again, this time in acknowledgment.

If she couldn’t feel the heat coming off of Sarah’s skin she’d think she wasn’t real, lying there so quietly. But, slowly, Sarah’s hand emerges, tugging the book a little closer onto her towel. Rachel allows herself ten flushed seconds to trail her gaze from the gentle hand down Sarah’s tanned body.

And then she jumps.

The water is needles. The kids scream at her joining them, elated, and she pushes her body through several laps beside them until every muscle aches. It’s only when she’s sure she looks occupied enough that she dares sneak a glance at the dock, where she’s laid her bait. The tiny scrap of paper tucked into the front of the book.

Sarah has it open, her sunglasses pushed onto her head. There’s a mark across the bridge of her nose where they sat; it tugs something in Rachel’s chest, a near pause in her treading water.

Sarah’s lips move slightly as she reads. Rachel pretends she can see what she’s saying at this distance, despite having read the small note so many times she’s sure to have committed each word to memory.

_This book was my father’s attempt to make something terrible a little less heartbreaking, and it failed. I seem to be doomed to repeating his mistakes._

Rachel’s underwater before Sarah reaches the last word. Just in case.

When she emerges, the book is shut. Sarah has her sunglasses back in place, and she’s returned to sunbathing, as if anything else deserves to touch that much of her skin.

“Race you,” Clementine challenges just as Rachel goes to dunk herself again.

“To where?” she asks, surprised to have to feign reluctance.

The other kids have stopped their laps and now swim freely, two holding themselves up by their elbows on the floating dock, chatting with the lifeguard. Ten more minutes of swimming, then. They’ll all trek to the changing rooms and Sarah won’t say a word about it.

Clementine squints into the sun, every freckle more pronounced than even a few weeks ago. She looks older, somehow; older than ten, like Rachel blinked and missed a full year.

“The buoy? On the count of three.” She grins, hopeful. Rachel purses her lips, but then smiles back.

“Three!” she says, propelling herself forward to Clementine’s squealed protests.

All there is is the flurry of churned water and her lungs stealing gasps every time her face emerges. Pounding, of limbs and her heart. Clementine thrashing a few feet behind her. But Rachel doesn’t win.

Just before the buoy, she lets herself sink. A little. Enough to have to pretend to catch up. Clementine speeds past her and hits the mark with a triumphant cheer, letting her face fall into sympathy as Rachel meets her.

“Next time,” Clementine consoles, hanging onto the bobbing side of the buoy. “Don’t worry.”

Rachel moves her hand along the plastic until she finds something to grab, and then she and Clementine bob along together, legs hanging dead beneath them.

She can’t remember the last time the two of them were this close; a bedtime ghost story, maybe, when they were passing around flashlights. But Clementine sparkles in the sun – her eyes the color of deep water, too dense for light to reach in full, instead revealing small cracks of amber in the dark. She can’t help her smile, as if she too is thinking about their proximity. It seems like a treat to her. To have her counselor all to herself.

Rachel’s stomach sinks. She should have given more of herself to them – there are only two and a half weeks left, and it doesn’t feel like enough. For anything.

“Are you coming back next year?” she asks, watching Clementine’s curls fight against the weight of the water.

Clementine tilts her head, as if she’s considering, but then it seems like it’s only to properly take in Rachel’s face. Rachel finds herself trying to neutralize her expression under the observation, hating that she might have given something away, unsure of what that might even have been.

“It isn’t really up to me,” Clementine says, her lips a funny smile. “I don’t pay the bills.”

“Oh,” Rachel says.

She doesn’t know what to feel. About this, about Sarah on the dock, now sitting. About the whistle perched at the lifeguard’s lips. _Time’s almost up, Rachel._

“But I want to,” Clementine says.

The whistle blows and everyone but them starts to move towards the shore. Clementine hangs on another second, preventing Rachel from moving with her stillness.

“Are you?” Clementine asks.

The lifeguard blows a small _tweet_ at the two of them. Sarah’s watching, just a pair of sunglasses and all that tangled hair in the distance. So much of this will still be here if Rachel returns – the lake and the weeds and the endless expanse of sky, dripping blue onto the tips of trees. The sound of children laughing and teasing each other as they dash out of the water. Sarah. Hopefully.

If Rachel hasn’t ruined it.

If, for once, the universe ignores what Rachel deserves.

“I want to,” she says.

For that one small moment, it doesn’t hurt. They let go of the buoy.

 

* * *

 

That afternoon is the water fight – Rachel hasn’t been waiting, per se, but it’s understood that this is where everyone at camp settles the score, and she knows exactly what she can do with something heavy in her fist. Only, this time it isn’t kids in the schoolyard and a rock the size of revenge. It’s an apology. It’s part two, and she hopes it works.

Rachel toweled off after swimming and Sarah handed back the book without a word, truthfully as Rachel expected. Whether or not Sarah recognized it as an olive branch it wasn’t something she was likely to acknowledge, all things considered, and Rachel only really wanted her to read it. (She did. Rachel caught her eye for a second and- she did.)

The second part of this olive branch was formulated in pieces each time Sarah reminded Quinn what awaited her at the water fight, something about revenge, something about the river (and Rachel still hasn’t forgotten their hike, eons ago), at this point mostly a joke between them that will end with a bucket of water or one of the elusive Super Soakers.

(It isn’t too hard to bribe the lifeguards. Rachel’s been buttering them up all summer, eyes on their metaphorical ring of keys, just in case.)

(It isn’t too hard to get her girls on board, either, with only a few words on cabin rivalry. A common enemy will unite any random selection of people.)

So Rachel finds herself in the middle of the field with the largest water gun perched on her shoulder, only smelling plastic and hose water, only seeing utter chaos as the entire camp faces off around her, a sea of mud slowly forming underfoot.

Sarah has her bucket half full and chases Quinn to dunk it on her a second time, despite the water balloons that Quinn blindly chucks behind her. Every few feet one of Rachel’s girls splashes Sarah with a small bucket or a water balloon, nothing distracting enough for her to notice she’s being steered in a certain direction, even as she staggers after Quinn’s erratic path.

Rachel, like a sniper, waits. As if she’s been trained for this.

The thing about an olive branch is this: from anyone else, it would be kind. It would say sorry and it wouldn’t sting, and it would be the first step in making amends.

But it’s Rachel. It’s her Super Soaker pumped and ready, it’s her children that lead Sarah to her drenched fate, it’s her apology that’s constructed as a test. _If you truly care… If I actually mean something…_

Quinn ducks behind Rachel and Sarah’s bucket contents hits the ground beside her, a solid splash in the mud, just in time for Sarah to take the full force of the Super Soaker directly in her face. Maybe it’s the chilled water – maybe it’s that Rachel’s behind it. Sarah freezes in place even after Rachel stops, her eyes wide in shock and everything soaked.

The empty bucket drops between her feet, useless, but that’s the only movement for a full minute as Quinn and all of Rachel’s watching girls catch themselves somewhere between laughter and horror.

They don’t quite get what it means until Sarah does.

And then Sarah steps forward, water streaming off of her, and shoves Rachel hard in the chest.

Rachel lands in the mud. Solidly on her behind.

“You _bitch_ ,” Sarah says, expression telling Rachel that she’s still shocked, still trying to put it together, not at all laughing like a few of the girls nervously do.

A couple more kids have circled around with water guns and balloons of their own, ammunition held in place as they try to see what’s happening. It isn’t quite a crowd, but from the ground, where Rachel sits in a thick two inches of mud, it’s enough people to have her cheeks burning.

“Sarah,” Quinn finally says, a foot behind Rachel, no longer protected by Rachel’s body but also no longer in danger with Sarah’s hands empty and almost imperceptibly shaking. “Like…”

Nothing more is said until Quinn reaches down and roughly grabs Rachel’s arm, pulling her to her feet. Rachel’s whole bottom half is caked in mud. She can feel it in her shorts, uncomfortably, and between her bare feet and her sandals, squishing as she takes a step away from Sarah. The rest of the kids are still watching. Marlow tosses a water balloon between her hands, hesitant to move on.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, not to Rachel but to Quinn, which sends something rippling through the tiny crowd.

A couple break away to continue their own wars and balloons smash as they hit the ground, squeals melding with the shrieks and laughter of the rest of the camp. Rachel watches them disappear into the turmoil with a strange lump in her throat. (They veer near Beth, Beth who’s trying too hard, who holds a sharp smile in place, standing still as her girls pelt her. It doesn’t look real at all. Nothing does.)

Quinn catches the apology that isn’t, finally letting go of Rachel’s arm and leaving a muddy handprint behind. She frowns between Sarah and Rachel for a second; frowns like she’s a peer, a mediator, like this is equally her mess and she equally doesn’t get it.

“You okay?” she asks Rachel.

The thing is, Rachel’s fine. Horrifically muddy, but at ease. She smiles.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, amiably.

Quinn’s eyebrows are up and crinkled, trying to put everything together in a way that makes sense. Rachel would apologize for the jagged edges if it was something she wanted to acknowledge, but Sarah’s shifting uneasily on her feet, the bucket abandoned in front of her, and this is right where Rachel wants her.

“I’ll walk you,” Sarah says, a hand on her neck.

“No need,” Rachel replies. “I’m perfectly capable of walking myself.”

Sarah winces. “Yeah, but…”

The handful of kids who are still keeping an eye on this make themselves scarce as Rachel starts to move, not wanting the confrontation. Rachel wonders what her girls think; if they know they were used, if they can see any of this as planned. She spots Sahar picking up broken bits of water balloon with a sweet little frown and feels a tug of regret, even though Sahar wasn’t part of it from the start.

“I’m fine,” Rachel insists, waving Sarah away.

Quinn steps aside to let Rachel pass, reluctantly, like she was eager to mend whatever she saw broken between them. It’s so far from Quinn’s attitude towards Rachel at the start of the summer that Rachel wants to laugh – but she’s carefully making her way across the battlefield, sandals squelching with each step, and laughter isn’t what she wants to present right now. This isn’t insanity. This isn’t a momentary slip, caused by five and a half weeks with the same people in close proximity.

She turns back, once, just to be sure.

Sarah hasn’t budged.

Sarah hasn’t let her shoulders down, too stricken by her own actions.

 _Figure it out_ , Rachel projects. _I’ll be waiting._

 

* * *

 

Two nights.

Rachel waits two nights – waits through another wave of Sarah ignoring her, another wall between them in the mess hall, a soccer session with Sarah forgoing the bleachers to stand alone in the mud, a campfire Sarah spends burning marshmallows at Cosima’s side.

Friday night they play bingo in the rec hall (Rachel doesn’t win) and Sarah sits at the very front, with Tony, seemingly to annoy Alison, but likely because Rachel took a spot in the back.

It’s guilt, of course, that has Sarah pressing her lips together each time she accidentally catches Rachel’s eye, from snapping and from letting her guard down, even for a second; it’s guilt mixed with shame, and then also anger, because it’s Sarah and because Sarah’s not stupid. She’s figured it out.

Hopefully.

Rachel marks _B4_ on her bingo card listlessly, willing Sarah to finally come over. They go through three more rounds. (Beth wins. Clementine wins. Rudy wins, and his whole table shouts unnecessarily.) Rachel almost forgets that she’s waiting, but then they pack up and head back to the cabins and Sarah stops on the porch for _just a second_ – and Rachel’s breath catches, like maybe she got it right for once.

“Uh, goodnight,” Sarah says, hand in her hair, before disappearing into her cabin.

Olivia stumbles into Rachel’s back as Rachel freezes in place.

“ _Really_ ,” Olivia snips, brushing herself off. She gives Rachel a cold look as she makes a show of walking around her, but Rachel doesn’t fully take it in at all. It’s a bump and Sarah gone from the porch.

Inside the cabins everyone talks at a volume that forces Rachel to only catch tones, like it’s another language entirely. She stays on the porch for a few minutes, halfheartedly listening, feeling like an alien with small goosebumps covering her bare skin. The hairs on her arms stand at attention – she wants to tell them it doesn’t matter, that they aren’t waiting anymore. But she’s just cold. Just lonely.

Eventually she heads inside and forces a smile at her girls, who are playing some word association game from their bunks and don’t ask for a story.

What would she tell them anyway? She considers Pandora, again, this time with her own reasoning for Pandora’s actions. _Wouldn’t you? If you could?_ Demeter, maybe, but she already did Persephone, and it’s only the emptier side of that. She’s running out of myths. She’s running out of stories.

 _I could tell you one of my own, finally_ , she thinks, leaning against her doorframe, watching them all animatedly tossing out answers. _How about the girl who came to Canada and didn’t make a single friend. Not until-_

They don’t care. They’ve stopped asking.

She washes her face alone, carefully. Lights out, she tells them, and they’re all in their sleeping bags, ready for the dark. In her own bed she takes out her book and runs her finger down the spine. The note is still in there; Sarah didn’t take it with her, no matter how many times Rachel checks.

She puts the book away. Takes out Kafka, remembers leaving Sartre on the log with Beth, and then Beth’s apology, and how Beth is still the only one who knows.

_Sarah-_

She hates Kafka. She hates absurdity, despite how much she’s tried to convince herself otherwise. Would she- would she have even touched _The Myth of Sisyphus_ had it not been for her mother? Would she have touched Camus? Could she have come to it independently and let it grow spores inside her?

She considers, carefully, not letting the thought touch the edges, just how much of her life has been shaped by what transpired with her mother. And then the book’s away. All the books are away. She’s on her feet, because she doesn’t know how to stay in bed when it’s dark and all she can feel is the weight of her mother’s absence in her chest. She tiptoes through the cabin. The only breathing she can hear is even, soft, and no one calls out to her.

 _I’ll be back_ , she mentally sends them anyway.

Maybe because she believes she’s different than Sarah. Or maybe because she senses Sarah outside, before she even sees her on the steps, blocking the only escape route. She can’t go any farther than the door. She stops with her fingertips against it, and then presses her forehead to the screen, entirely trapped.

Sarah’s on the phone, talking quietly. Her mother, or – Rachel listens delicately, willing her heart to stop thudding so loud.

“Just, all of it,” Sarah says. Her back is to Rachel but her shoulders sag, soft in the moonlight. “I dunno. I’m ready to be home.”

Rachel’s heart sinks; a startling sensation when she tries to figure out why. Home means not here, means away from Rachel, means-

The end of the summer, which puts a creeping panic in her lungs. She _knows_ it’s almost over, but the idea is that there’s still time, there’s still just enough time for it to all work out, a foolish amount of _hope_ , and Sarah’s let go of it entirely. Sarah doesn’t want to stay to watch it play out. She’s given up, and Rachel doesn’t know how to reconcile that.

Sarah breathes out something shaky into the phone, something too honest to be overheard, and Rachel instinctively steps back. It creaks a floorboard. For a second she wants Sarah to have heard it, but the moment passes and Rachel still has her fingers to the screen with her arms now outstretched.

This act of confessing. Sarah does it so easily; her chest opens on a hinge, and the truth is out. _I just wanted to kiss you_ , Rachel remembers her saying.

Rachel breathes in. _I know. It terrified me._

The phone call peters out to a bumpy silence, Sarah mumbling one or two-worded responses into the receiver as whoever it is on the other end consoles or reassures.

Rachel’s never had anyone to confess to. She never had anyone who cared to know. She has _secrets_ , but what good are they if no one wants to unearth them? Are they truly secrets if there’s no one to keep them from?

“I love you too,” Sarah says into the phone, her voice slightly diluted. “See you soon.” The phone goes away. She stays seated on the porch steps, now leaning into the rail.

It’s a clear night – the stars are out, and Rachel sees evidence of their light caught in the tangles of Sarah’s hair, like thin silver filaments in an unraveling tapestry. There’s a glint to the edge of everything. Sarah is so still, so calm. She could be water afraid to touch the shoreline. Or a rock that lets the river run over it.

Before Rachel can stop herself, she opens the door.

 

* * *

 

Once, a long time ago, Rachel sat in front of a mirror and watched her face as it cycled through all the expressions she was too young to name – grief, pity, dejection, shame, resentment. She mapped out the changes in her eyes, in the skin around her mouth. She felt things until she thought it would burn holes in her. And then she stopped.

On the porch step beside her, Sarah does this without a mirror. Without intention.

Rachel holds her teeth to her lip and names the expressions for her (hostility, anguish, disgust, regret) and when it stops Rachel’s mouth is sore from the stiffness, from ignoring the obvious. Which is: this is the worst way to have done this.

Sarah doesn’t say anything.

Her hands move around a small piece of wood she broke off the edge of the porch, turning and turning it until every facet has been felt, and her face settles into a sort of resigned numbness. Like they’ve already gone through this, and it’s only Rachel that’s pretending otherwise.

“So-” Rachel starts, sounding less like herself than ever before.

Sarah’s jaw shifts at the break in the silence, but that’s it. Just the tiny movement.

_So I’ve invaded your space and you don’t know how to tell me to leave._

_So I grew tired of waiting for you to stop ignoring me._

_So we’re adults, despite our actions this entire summer, and I was really hoping we could sit down and talk about it. Except I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to have to say anything. I always say the wrong things and this is why we’re here._

Rachel rubs her eye and stops looking at Sarah. Maybe if she’s focused on the dark shape of the picnic table in the dark shadow of yard, the barely lit impression of where they sat so long ago, it won’t feel as close to drowning. It’s all smudged without sunlight; all blanketed in a heavy grey, so dense she could squeeze it and catch pulp if she wanted.

Sarah exhales. “You’re the one who came out here,” she finally says, and Rachel turns back.

There are shadows under Sarah’s eyes that might not be shadows at all – exhaustion, likely, at how Rachel continues to back away from everything. She doesn’t run, but. God, she might as well, at this point.

“I know,” she says. Sarah doesn’t quite roll her eyes but it stings all the same. “I- I know.”

 _At the water fight_ , she wants to say.

_That note you read._

Her mouth is full of cotton batting.

Sarah sets the piece of wood down on the porch between them and then stands, for a moment looking like she’s about to go to bed or slip into the forest – just this uneasy hesitation, ending when she moves to the other side of the post and sits against the railing. All Rachel can see of her is her feet, shoved into untied boots. A bit of her legs that haven’t been shaved in at least a few days.

“I don’t get you,” Sarah says, tired, hidden behind the pillar.

Maybe Rachel can do this if they don’t have to look at each other; she can pretend it’s something she’s reading out loud, a passage from a book, meant for no one and not belonging to her in the least.

Sarah takes in a breath that shudders. It’s a sound she’d make if she was crying, Rachel realizes a second too late. But she can’t be. Not over this. Not over-

“You read the book, yes?” Rachel forces out. Her chest is tightening and she presses her knuckles against it.

“That’s not _you_ , Rachel,” Sarah says. Sarah’s boots say. Sarah’s small ankles sticking bare out of her unlaced boots say, severed from Sarah in the darkness, and Rachel doesn’t have to have heard. “It’s a fucking- Jesus, what did you want me to take from it?”

Rachel inhales sharply; she tries to recall the symptoms of a heart attack in females, just in case. Shortness of breath. Chest pain. Nausea.

She took a First Aid course, once, through the school, practicing CPR on a plastic dummy and taking notes that meant nothing as they did the final test together. Her group scored an eighty-eight. Disappointing. She mostly remembers it being disappointing. Sarah’s still waiting for an answer.

“I wanted you to understand,” Rachel says, her voice constricted by the pain in her chest.

Maybe it is a heart attack; she wouldn’t be too surprised, given everything. Delphine could have easily slipped some drug into her drink at dinner, a delayed act of revenge. And then there’s the fact that Rachel has never in her life stopped to deal with her stress. (But mostly: Sarah stays quiet for an unnervingly long time, and Rachel doesn’t know what to do with the anvil that’s replaced her heart.)

After what feels like an eternity, Sarah shifts on the railing, creaking all the jointed wood. “Was that the note?” she asks. “Was that what-”

“Yes,” Rachel says, too quickly.

It’s a trial to get her words out – everything feels squeezed, compressed into thinner and thinner versions of itself. Her breath comes twice as fast as it normally does and she refuses to search for her pulse because she doesn’t want to know it’s racing. Either this is a heart attack or she’s simply dying, right here on the splintery porch steps without Sarah able to even look at her.

“I needed- I needed you to know, that I didn’t-” She stops to inhale, and every edge catches inside her. “I’m not _good_ at this.”

“At what?” Sarah asks.

Out of curiosity, maybe, or the fact that the moon dips behind a cloud and they’re struck with a deeper layer of darkness, Sarah stands up from the railing, moving a few steps closer. Rachel can’t lift her head. She’s too preoccupied with the pounding of her heart and the way it kicks the air right out of her.

“People,” she says. And then, through her teeth, “Feelings.”

Sarah snorts. “Yeah, clearly.”

But she takes another step closer, nearly back to where she’d been sitting on the top step. Rachel shifts just in case; just in case she wants to rejoin her, maybe with less of the anger she had before. She was here first, after all. Rachel was the one who had to go and ruin that.

“As if you’re any better,” she says, a few seconds too late for it to have any sting.

But Sarah still reacts, clomping down to the bottom of the steps where she stands with her hands clasped tight behind her head. It feels, faintly, like an animal offering up its soft neck the moment before it attacks. Rachel waits. Holds her hiccupy breath. Sarah’s hands move down until they’re at her shoulder blades.

“At least I had the balls to admit it,” Sarah mutters.

Rachel’s breath jumps. It’s a stutter in her chest, too slippery to be stamped out.

“Admit what?” she asks.

Sarah looks at her like she’s an idiot, giving her an eye roll. “Don’t play that game. I’m not playing that game.” But Rachel doesn’t respond, and after a painstaking minute Sarah finally says, “It wasn’t just… hooking up, or whatever, for me. And even if you won’t admit it, I know it wasn’t for you either.”

Rachel’s mouth opens in an attempt to reply but all that comes out is a soft gasping sound, like she really can’t get any air. She could pull out a rib, maybe. Barter for some space; at least enough to hold the dead, suffocating weight of her heart. She still has her lips parted when Sarah closes the gap between the two of them in one swift stride, seemingly out of concern, her hand stopping just an inch short of Rachel’s cheek as if she was about to stroke it.

Rachel feels her traitor of a lip _tremble_. 

“I was waiting for you to catch up,” Sarah says. “Realize it. But you won’t, will you.”

She rocks back on her feet, angling her face towards the thin layer of clouds that don’t quite manage to cover the moon. The shadows stretch her eyelashes to a painful length – Rachel wants to tell her she’s beautiful, that there’s never been anything more beautiful than she is in the moonlight, but it’s lead on her tongue. All she can do is look at her. Let her heart thrum.

“It’s complicated, I know,” Sarah says, her eyes shut until they aren’t anymore and she’s just staring up with anguish. “It’ll never not be about Beth. It’ll never… be anything more than this, the two of us in the fucking dark, still not talking about it.”

Rachel places her tongue between her teeth, running it through the sharp edges until she can’t feel it. Sarah’s so close Rachel could touch her – take her hand in her own, put her… fingertips on her skin…

Sarah’s given up. That’s what this is. But Rachel can’t let go; not when it feels so much like it hasn’t even started.

“Every time you kissed me I thought I would fall apart,” Rachel says. She yanks it out of her chest. It bleeds on the steps in front of them and Sarah can only look back in a stunned silence, a hand now on her mouth.

“It’s still about Beth,” Rachel pushes forward. Her voice closes in on hoarse and she’s sure Sarah can hear it shaking, trying to hold onto as much air as it can get. “You’re right. It will never not be about Beth. But that’s because… That’s because…”

She can almost say it – it’s a pressure inside her, like all that weight finally wants to come bursting out. Her lip trembles again and Sarah moves another inch closer, right against the stairs, giving in and sitting on that bottom step like it’s a month ago and Rachel’s just about to read that line that will never cease to haunt her. Not when it’s now so tangled with Sarah, when it has a dozen more meanings in the aftermath.

She wonders if Sarah’s thinking about it too. _I am assured that this ignorance explains everything and that this darkness is my light_. Sarah moves a careful hand from the step to Rachel’s thigh, resting it softly against the skin. Go on, she’s saying. I’m listening.

Rachel takes in a breath that fills her lungs like a windsock, dancing from the overhang of someone’s front porch. Sarah’s listening. It’s quiet. They’re alone in the darkness, but they can still see.

“I came to Canada when I was eight years old,” she says. She has to tell it to the distant trees; that’s the only way it will work. But Sarah understands. Her thumb begins to stroke a pattern into Rachel’s skin, patient. She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t acknowledge the tears pricking Rachel’s eyes. “It was so cold, my father had his job, we were so far from everything we knew. My mother… Did I tell you she was beautiful? She was so kind. I really did love her.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, a whisper.

She’s dropped her head so all Rachel can see is the dark mess of curls and tangles, still managing to catch the hollow promise of light.

“That first year,” Rachel continues, her throat raw, “she grew very sad. I thought it was my fault.”

Sarah’s head lifts and her eyes are wide, as if she’s gone and taken the ending from its spot and it’s now inside her with fangs she doesn’t know how to tame. It’s okay, Rachel wants to tell her. It’s something you grow to live with. But Sarah’s looking at her like she knows now; she knows why it will always be about Beth, and why Rachel can’t let go of it.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

Rachel would expect it to come out as a request for her to stop there, but it doesn’t. It isn’t another apology, either; it’s a small breath of air: something for Rachel’s lungs to hold. Rachel can keep going. She does.

“It wasn’t long after my ninth birthday that I found her. She was in the bathtub, and she’d taken all her pills.” Sarah shudders and her hand tightens against Rachel’s thigh, nails momentarily claws. Rachel doesn’t stop. She can’t, when it’s almost all out. “I called for an ambulance. It came in time. But there’s something that happens, sometimes, when you take all those pills – sometimes it doesn’t matter if you make it to the hospital, because the damage is irreparable. Did you know that? That sometimes your organs slowly shut down anyway? That the doctors can’t do anything to stop it?”

“You were _nine_ ,” Sarah murmurs, fumbling until she catches one of Rachel’s hands. “Rachel…”

She has tears in her eyes to match Rachel’s, even as Rachel tries to blink them away. She was nine. She was so angry, before she realized that she should be terrified. She didn’t know what it was like to lose a mother. And then it was all she knew.

“You looked just like her,” she says, in a whisper, “the night Beth tried to kill herself.”

Sarah looks horrified – desperate to try to take it back, like they could relive that night and Sarah could be stronger. Could wash the blood off her hands and somehow stop trembling. It doesn’t work like that, Rachel wants to tell her. There is no way to go back that would make it any different. There is no way to unlive that fear.  

“I had no idea,” Sarah says, raw, pulling in her lips as if that might stop the emotion from escaping.

Rachel breathes in, sits up a little straighter. “Yes, well, it wasn’t something I…”

And then she stops, because she doesn’t need to explain herself. Not to Sarah. Not when Sarah’s moving up so they’re sitting on the same step, finally matched for height. Sarah looks in her eye. The hand that was too afraid before comes up and runs a soft knuckle down the side of Rachel’s face, so full of unsaid things that Rachel has to turn her head.

“Are you scared?” Sarah asks, as quiet as the rustle of trees.

Rachel’s head turns back, just enough that she can look at Sarah, take in the shine of her eyes in the moonlight. Or. A shine of tears, maybe, that Rachel doesn’t want to see, because- because here they sit in the truth. Sarah’s question is a confession. _Are you as scared as I am?_

“Yes,” Rachel whispers. Sarah’s shoulders dip in relief. Rachel pulls the last ounce of bravery from her chest, just to say what she does next. “I’m scared if I kiss you I’ll fall apart.”

There’s a fraction of release before Rachel sees Sarah’s face, eyes so round they could be the moon itself, lips parted in what Rachel estimates, going on her own feelings, as shock and delight.

“Oh,” Sarah exhales.

Her hand is warm around Rachel’s, a small safe shell enclosing something soft, something embarrassingly fragile, and Rachel shuts her eyes to continue.

“But I want to try,” she says. “Even if it destroys me.”

There’s a pause, a silence that grows excruciating, only more so as Rachel opens her eyes to catch Sarah’s pained expression.

Sarah bites her lip. “No. I’m sorry. Not-”

“What?” Rachel says, stomach sinking.

Her breath is flighty again and she realizes between small intakes of air that it had stopped, at some point, that she didn’t die, it wasn’t a heart attack, and that all she feels is panic. Sarah’s looking at her like all she knows how to do is apologize. So terribly full of regret.

“I don’t want to destroy you,” Sarah says. She tightens her grip on Rachel’s hand, but Rachel pulls it away. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I have to-”

“It’s fine,” Rachel says, exhaling through her nose, then quickly stands up to leave Sarah alone on the steps.

Sarah’s chewing on her lip with great concern, but she doesn’t follow when Rachel moves to walk away. She lets her go. Rachel finds herself completely alone as she slips back into her half of the cabin and Sarah still hasn’t followed her.

She really has let her go.

Rachel doesn’t cry, because she’s not some foolish little girl with her heart between her hands. But her cheeks are wet as she goes to bed, and in the morning, her throat has never been so sore.

 


	7. chapter 6, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Rachel reach the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here we are, the final part of what's been actual years in the making. 
> 
> i have to thank everyone who's read this to start with — the wordcount alone is horrifying, but you all stuck with me as shit got far too deep for summer camp and took its sweet time between updates. the comments you've left have brought me to tears in their kindness and i am eternally grateful for your responses. 
> 
> and to my sister, who didn't bat an eye when i asked what books a teenage rachel duncan might take with her to summer camp and then provided me with the backbone of this entire story, you know your value. but thank-you. again. always. 
> 
> lastly i have to thank my very wonderful dear friend sharkodactyl:  
> there would be no "gods" if it wasn't for you, at first for the mere idea of rachel and sarah at a summer camp and then for becoming its biggest supporter — and the kind of support writers LONG for. all the love in these words comes from you, for the love you've given, for the love i aim to give back, for being the warm, generous, encouraging person who deserves to have entire epics written for her.  
> all 39k words of this final installment of "let the gods speak softly of us" are dedicated to you.

 

* * *

 

 The upside, Sarah tries to tell herself, is that S would be proud.

Rachel goes back to not looking at her but S would be proud. It’s another round of silence but S would be proud. Sarah can’t do shite without a lump in her throat but S would be proud, and this is what has to matter – because every part of Sarah, on those awful porch steps, wanted to give in, but she did what she thought was right.

A younger Sarah wouldn’t have cared that it felt wrong, the way Rachel was so ready to hurt herself. Any other Sarah would have kissed her and let it implode, because Sarah’s never been about the consequences, always been so far ahead of it by the time it blows up that she never feels the burn, and six months ago she would have eagerly let Rachel break herself into little pieces for momentary satisfaction.

Six months ago she would have been guiding Rachel’s hand.

And would pretend she didn’t feel sick, after, because she was so sure she didn’t feel anything.

As it turns out, you can feel sick by doing the right thing, too. She learns this Saturday evening, watching Rachel pick apart a piece of garlic bread until it’s only crumbs as the rest of the mess hall ignores her. (If she’d kissed her, would they be sitting together? Would Rachel smile? Would it be over and hurt more than either of them could imagine?)

Eventually one of Rachel’s girls engages her in a conversation about quicksand and it’s enough for Rachel to look like a person lives inside her again. Sarah stops watching. The night goes on.

Sunday morning she finally calls her mum, because it feels time. All her girls are asleep; it’s easy to slip out, pull on a sweatshirt to combat the dewy chill and walk through the forest until she’s sure she won’t be heard. She ends up somewhere near the rock where she and Rachel once sat with blood on their hands but it’s okay. It feels different, somehow, knowing Rachel’s side of that night. Knowing the fear in Rachel’s eyes had its own reasons, and it wasn’t just that Sarah had come so unhinged.  

“You’d better be dying,” S says upon picking up, her voice rough in the way that reminds Sarah it’s the same early hour in Toronto.

She winces, kicking a clump of wet leaves off the path.

“Sorry, Mum,” she says. “I-”

And then she pauses, because in eighteen years she still hasn’t figured out a way to admit to the sorts of things that come naturally to most people. _I have feelings for this girl and I’m trying not to fuck it up. I think I did the right thing, but I don’t know for sure. And she hates me. I think she hates me now._

“Sarah,” S says, softer.

There’s a rustling of blankets that must be S sitting up, and Sarah thinks of the light in her bedroom, the east-facing windows that, every morning, pour sun into the room like a hole in the hull of a boat, staining even the quilt a pale buttery yellow. After more than one long, painful night Sarah found herself curled up in S’s bed as the sun was rising, the warmth of that light the only thing that would calm her.

She misses _so much_. It claws holes in her, as she paces a ring into the spongy earth.

“It could’ve waited,” she says. “It’s not an emergency.”

S lets out a breath, not quite a sigh. “If you’re calling now, it must be important. So let’s have it.”

Sarah looks through the trees to the distant rock, where, in the grey morning light, it’s taken on the appearance of some strange crouched animal about half its normal size.

“How do I know I’ve done the right thing?” she asks.

Her fingers are cold, bent like branches as they clutch the phone to her ear. It’s strange how long it takes for the sun to warm everything up. Strange that it could feel so close to fall only halfway through August, a nip to the air. It’ll be gone by mid-morning, she knows, but right now it’s almost disorienting.

“How does it feel?” S asks in reply. If Sarah was home S would be setting a cup of tea down in front of her, the steam rising with assurance.

“Like crap,” Sarah says. She pulls her other hand up into her sleeve to warm her fingers. “I think she hates me.”

“Was it easy?” S asks.

Sarah rubs her face with her sleeved fist, turning away from the rock.

“No.”

“You made a hard choice, then,” S says. Sarah breathes out a _yeah_. “I think you know it was the right one. But you want to know if it was worth it.”

A breeze picks up, cutting through Sarah’s sweatshirt. She still has the image of the rock burned into her brain, not a boulder but an animal, something greedy, something hurt, and she needs it gone. She needs it to mean nothing.

“This whole bloody summer’s been a back-and-forth of her hating me. And then it finally felt like we were getting somewhere, but she…” Sarah starts walking again, just to get away from the rock. Even if it is towards the water. Even if- “I still have no idea what she wants, Mum. Just that I’ve mucked it up again.”

Another mother might ask what happened, or who it is she’s talking about. S has always been respectful of Sarah’s secrecy until it became dangerous, and Sarah has always been grateful, but right now she wishes she would push. Because it’s the only way Sarah will be able to say it. And- she wants to. For whatever reason, she’d like to confess to all of it.

S hums out a considering sound, and in the background stairs creak like she’s heading down to the kitchen to start some tea. “Well, do you know what you want?” she asks.

Sarah steps over a fallen branch, cutting through the forest so she doesn’t have to get quite so close to the lake. She’s sure Beth is fast asleep in bed anyway and that Alison would shoot up the second Beth tried to slip out but a part of Sarah will always expect to find Beth in the water, sinking like a stone someone cast across the surface that couldn’t quite make it.

It’s colder here. Sarah shivers in her sweatshirt. The lake through the trees is undisturbed, but Sarah doesn’t stare for long.

“Part of me knows,” she says. “Part of me wants to pretend I don’t want anything.”

“A year ago I’d be worried, but I think you know what’s right,” S says, dishes clinking on her end.

Sarah can only just make out the sound of the kettle whistling. It sounds exactly like homesickness, a tiny noise muffled by the lake and wind in the trees and her own feet crunching leaves and pine needles as she moves along the shore.

S continues, softer, “It’s been quiet without you around here. I’m glad you called.”

“Me too,” Sarah says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. A bird lands in a tree not too far from her, tilting its head in suspicion as she takes another step forward. Still, it doesn’t fly away. She can see the faint pattern across its feathers. And it watches her right back. “When I’m home, I’ll tell you all about it, yeah? You and Fe?”

“Of course. When you’re ready.” S pours her cup of tea: a sound Sarah knows by heart. Then the splash of milk, and the spoon against the porcelain.

“You can come up a little early, if you want,” Sarah says, as she leaves the bird behind her. “Eat lunch with us. See the grounds.”

She’d told her to come late afternoon because she thought she’d want the time, that she and Cosima and Delphine would spend the final day clinging to each other, but there’s no way it won’t all be colored by Rachel now. Even here in the forest it’s all been marred – the oak overhanging the edge of the lake, where she asked Rachel about the book. _Doesn’t it make you feel hopeless_ , she couldn’t quite get out.

She’s walking the same path. Following their trajectory from the night it all became clear, how exactly Rachel was going to play this.

“I’d like that,” S says. It’s soft in the way that S never is, after years of Sarah taking that softness and twisting it back around to hurt her. Sarah’s stomach muscles tighten, trying to squeeze out the shame. The regret.

She doesn’t veer away from the water where she and Rachel had that night. Instead she turns back, filling in the gaps between their path and the boathouse, that stretch of waterfront she’s never walked so close before. Beth must have, at some point. Sarah thinks back to the times she watched her take off into the woods from their stilted conversations on the dock – this would be the way she’d go, all the way back to her cabin. If she didn’t take the path. But. Sarah doesn’t know that she would.

“You know I’m sorry, right?” Sarah says, hearing S’s cup hit the table on the other end.

“For what, chicken?” S asks.

Sarah ducks under a low-hanging branch, trying not to catch her hair in the needles.

“Everything,” she says. “All that shite I put you through.”

There’s a pause where S seems to collect herself. Sarah narrowly avoids a patch of poison ivy.

“You were just trying to find your place in the world,” S says, more understanding than Sarah expects.

A mosquito lands on her cheek and she brushes it away. “If my kid did that to me I’d kill her, so.”

S laughs. “No you wouldn’t,” she says. “You’d love her. As much as you try not to, Sarah, I know you see the good in people.”

All Sarah can do is accept it, grudgingly, not telling her that it’s only because of her that she’s able to. But S must know anyway. Just like she knows what Sarah means when she tells her to give Felix a good kick for her, and only chides her a little bit.

“I’ll see you in two weeks,” she says as Sarah lets her go, leaving Sarah to her struggle through the tangle of underbrush along the water’s edge.

“Love you,” Sarah says just before she hangs up. S manages to say it back before Sarah ends the call, wedging a sore kind of warmth in Sarah’s chest with the words. It tastes too much like home. And then not enough at the very same time.

She’s trying to pin the warmth to a place it can keep when her foot slips over something hard, sending her stumbling until her hand hits a tree and she can brace herself. It didn’t feel stick-like, a bit too solid for that, but it was too skinny to be a rock. Curious, she crouches down to look.

There’s something red underneath the mesh of plants. A synthetic red. And then a glint, and she reaches for it, and-

Bile rises in her throat, because she’s holding a knife.

A bloodstained knife.

Only fifteen feet or so from where she found Beth in the water.

 

* * *

 

Three things happen on Monday, and Sarah manages to only feel sick over two of them.

The first takes place during breakfast, when Rachel is still doing her best to pretend Sarah doesn’t exist, even after Sarah brings her a cup of coffee. (“Thank-you,” Sahar says for Rachel, giving her a good nudge.) She drinks the coffee, at least. So it’s a small victory.

But that victory goes sour when the director comes over with a grin and hands them each a letter, written in a loopy scrawl that Sarah pins as Krystal’s before she even reaches the bottom.

_YOU’RE INVITED!_

Every _i_  dotted with a heart. The whole thing written in a glittery purple ink.

Rachel breaks her freeze-out to fix Sarah with an apt look of dread and resignation that Sarah’s sure she gives back in return, both of them holding the letters away from their girls until they can get a handle on this.

_The girls of 14-A and 15-A would like to cordially invite the girls of 10-A and 11-A to a CAMPOUT! This Friday, 6pm. As the role models of the senior camp, we recognize the importance of setting a good example and would like to reward our fellow role models with a night under the stars. Just bring your sleeping bags, your PJs, and a good attitude! No counselors allowed! (Except, for safety purposes, your pesky counselors will be close enough to hear your shouts, because the director wouldn’t budge.) The senior girls have planned a night of fun, relaxation, and maybe a few ghost stories as a thank-you and as a WELCOME to those of you who will be with us next year! 10-A, we’ll see you in two years ☺_

_You should also bring: pillows, flashlights, a change of clothes, water bottles, bug spray, and anything you need for the next day._

_Counselors: we have the tent, but you’ll need bedding, pyjamas, flashlights, bug spray, water bottles, and anything you’ll need to keep yourselves busy while the girls have their fun! (Of course, no contraband!)_

_C U soon!_

_XOXO Krystal, Shay, and the girls of 14-A and 15-A_

Sarah gives in and reads it to her table before Daniela can snatch it from her hands, and after a moment of looking like she’s swallowed a frog Rachel reads hers as well. They sound like a phone call with a bad connection, a two second lag, Rachel’s echo only enforcing how unbelievable this whole thing is.

Last year the senior girls planned a picnic.

Sarah pushes her plate into the center of the table, unable to look at the rest of her meal.

“Sounds cool,” Sophia says, the rest of the girls agreeing with her.

All Sarah can think is that she’s going to kill Krystal, about a minute after she kills Rachel, if there truly is only one tent and it’s for the counselors and it’s where they’ll be stuck the entire night. Rachel sends one last look down the table, undoubtedly feeling the same.

The second thing to happen on Monday, after Sarah spends all morning listening to her girls excitedly yammer on about their sleepover, planning outfits and hair and what they’ll bring, occurs when Sarah had actually forgotten about it. It drops five degrees with a sky of heavy clouds and she pulls on her sweatshirt before arts and crafts.

Except: she puts her hands in the pocket of the sweatshirt when she’s walking, her group meeting up with Beth’s on the way to the arts and crafts cabin. She puts her hands in the pocket and they curl around the knife.

It’s a cold flash of metal, and the drop of her stomach as she remembers the red stain on the blade, nearly matching the painted red handle.

She’d shoved it in her pocket after her walk yesterday morning because she didn’t know what else to do with it, not wanting to toss it somewhere and have a kid find it and then getting so angry that Beth did just that where a kid could’ve found it. But then she’d gone back to her cabin and got changed as her girls were waking up, and the drama of Quinn stealing Madeleine’s hairbrush very quickly had her focused on other things. Knife forgotten. Sweatshirt tossed aside.

“You okay?” Beth asks as they fall into step, and Sarah purposely falls out of step.

“Fine,” she says. Beth doesn’t press.

Sarah’s fingers are on the groove in the handle that she’d thought were unidentifiable initials, but somehow now that she’s not looking, only feeling, she can make out as TC. She glances at the side of Beth’s head and wonders what her dad’s name is. Cosima mentioned Beth’s mom’s name once and Sarah can’t remember what it was but it wasn’t a T, so that leaves her dad. Or grandfather. Or- she doesn’t know, but there isn’t anyone else who would leave a bloody knife in the forest so close to the lake.

She should have buried it. She nearly did, but all she could think about was some kid digging it up, smart enough to figure it out, and then all the secrets would come to light.

So Sarah does the best thing she can think of, while the kids are busy painting backdrops for the talent show that mostly look like abstract vomit the way they’re going about it, and she and Beth are perched at the corner table because Beth really seems to be trying to act less like a startled deer all the time. Or at least in Sarah’s presence. Because they’re… still not friends, but something close to that. Something Sarah would like to preserve, even with what she does next.

“What’s this,” Beth says as Sarah roughly jams the folded-up knife into Beth’s hand, blade safely tucked away.

“Yours,” Sarah says, quiet.

It takes a second, but then Beth registers what she’s holding, and the shell of a smile slips from her face. Her hand disappears into her pocket and when it comes out it’s empty.

“Isn’t it?” Sarah asks. “Doesn’t it belong to you? Or did someone else leave it behind?”

Beth’s face falls at an alarming rate, like a boat that capsizes and is gone before anyone can jump off it. Sarah feels squirmy, awful, realizing too late how mean she sounds and what a corner – literally – she’s put them in.

Out of nowhere, the kids start singing a camp song together, something about a bloody moose, while the specialist smiles on from where she’s washing brushes.

“Yeah,” Beth mutters. “I mean, my dad’s. But.”

Sarah’s hand burns where it came into contact with Beth’s, a delayed response. Like an allergic reaction. She half expects hives to pop up but it’s just the heat of shame, and she shoves her hand between her thigh and the chair to subdue it.

“Anyone could’ve found it,” Sarah says, even though what she means to say is _sorry_.

Beth ducks her head. “I know. I guess I… just thought it was in the lake, or something. I didn’t really want to think about it.”

Sarah bites her tongue before she can say _another_ stupid thing, because she goes to speak and all that wants to come out is _well at least it’s cold enough that you don’t have to worry about those ugly bracelets_ , staring at Beth’s long sleeves, a shirt she’s ninety percent sure is Alison’s going on the collar.

She manages to redirect her thought into a sympathetic hum, a very careful hand coming out to touch Beth’s arm, up near the elbow, a safe distance from her wrists.

Beth looks down at the touch, and when she looks up to meet Sarah’s eyes she has on another one of those unreadable expressions. It’s soft, at least. Sarah can choose to filter it through gratitude, trying to return it with a tight smile.

Beth finally looks away at the kids’ backdrops.

“This talent show is gonna blow,” she says under her breath, a comment meant just for Sarah.

She’s smiling. It’s tiny, but it’s a real smile, and Sarah gives her a real one in return, doing her best to pretend the lump in Beth’s pocket is anything other than a knife. The philosopher’s stone, maybe, like that Harry Potter movie. Beth’ll live forever.

It’s only as she’s walking her kids back to the cabins to clean up before lunch that she realizes the scope of what she’s done – she gave back the knife, yes, but she gave it to the person who saw it as an out in the first place.

“Sarah,” Raya says warily, bumping her back onto the path. “What’s wrong.”

Sarah pulls it together for a minute. A good minute. “Sloppy Joes,” she says.

But the damage is done inside her, and by the time she’s at the mess hall, everything so loud, all she can do is take her tray straight to Tony’s table to get away from any voices she might recognize.

Which is when the third thing happens.

She should’ve seen it coming, really. Avoid something long enough and it’ll sneak back around to find you, and Tony welcomes her like she has something to give him and it’s only as he drops his voice that she remembers exactly what she never did tell him.

“You read that book yet?” he asks. Casual, scooping the Sloppy part of his Joe back onto the bun with a butter knife.

Back at her table the kids are occupying Rachel in a conversation as she attempts to eat her Sloppy Joe with a fork, no doubt still on about the sleepover whose invitation could have waited given that there’ll be three more days of this.

Sarah watches Tony shovel a path down the middle of his plate. The knife hits the bun. The meat sauce is too red to be having this conversation, and she looks between him and Rachel with her fork before considering the word _betrayal_ and how it might fit into all this now that Rachel’s given her the final piece of the puzzle.

“I did,” Sarah says. “I gave it back to her.”

Rachel told her it was a gift for her mother, didn’t she? The book? Something her father gave her, but there are only two sets of handwriting in the margins.

“How was it?” Tony asks, like they’re talking about some movie she didn’t fully want to see.

But then he turns to look at her, and there’s something shading his eyes that understands completely what the book’s about. Sarah realizes if she told him everything, if she said _Rachel’s mum_ , and _I found Beth_ , and _Rachel found me_ , he’d have it all laid out in a sickeningly neat timeline in a way that Sarah still can’t manage.

She shakes her head. Lifts her shoulders. “You know,” she says. “Exactly what it said on the cover.”

They’re a few seats away from the boys today, all of them with Paul animatedly discussing their canoeing trip with the senior boys this weekend, and Tony glances to them now just to make sure they’re busy with their conversation.

“I had this buddy back in high school,” he says, as easy as before, but quieter as he finally looks back at her. “Real good guy. Strong morals. Sammy.”

He rubs at his forehead with the side of his palm, knife abandoned on the edge of his plate where it balances precariously. Sarah nods for him to continue. It takes a second, and he downs half his cup of orange juice. But then he’s speaking again. A little tighter.

“Junior year he has his dad’s gun. Kills himself. I saw the book, and I thought…” His hands go up like part of him is still striving for innocence, wanting to be wiped clean of ever having known. Sarah’s heart aches. She reaches out and puts a hand on his forearm, and after a minute he covers it with his own. “Shit. I don’t know. I thought it might say _something_.”

His hand squeezes hers, the skin of his palm rough and warm. They both look at the kids, all of them grinning. Laughing. Paul their mirror in the center like this summer never happened.

Sarah’s so envious – how he can just turn it on like that, just be exactly who they need him to be. She’s never known how to leave her shit behind. She’s never known anything.

“It didn’t say nice things,” she tells Tony, suddenly scared he’ll seek it out on his own and have to swallow every last cruel sentence. “Don’t read it, okay? It didn’t say anything you’d want to hear.”

“Okay,” he says, looking at her like he gets it.

He gives her hand another good squeeze and then goes back to his food, freeing the knife from its dangerously balanced perch.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says a minute later, when she’s busy with her food as well. He pulls the Sloppy Joe away from his face and his mouth is ringed with red sauce. “About your friend. I’m sorry you lost someone.”

He shrugs, taking on the appearance of a boy with the sauce on his face and his elbows on the table. “Everyone’s lost someone, Sarah. Everyone’s got someone they lost.”

“Yeah,” she says, as she thinks about it.

It isn’t always suicide, isn’t always death, but it’s true that everyone carries some sort of loss.

Tony’s contemplative frown turns into a smile as he says, innocently, “I’ve got his name tattooed on my ass if you ever want to check it out. Skinny dipping, maybe?”

The moment’s gone and he’s laughing as she gives him a soft shove, eventually breaking down to a giggle as well as he comically waggles his eyebrows. All the boys turn to watch the commotion, thrilled with the _wanker_ Sarah utters under her breath. But she’s smiling. He’s smiling. They aren’t stuck in the weight of Rachel’s book.

She had no idea it could be this easy.

 

* * *

 

Despite Rachel’s best attempts to deny Sarah’s existence the rest of the week, Sarah holds firm, invading her space at every opportunity.

It’s cruel. She knows that, catching the wince each time she brings Rachel coffee or brushes up against her during a shared activity. All Rachel would like is to pretend they don’t know each other. And Sarah refuses to let it go.

“What do you _want_ ,” Rachel finally utters during archery, when Sarah plops down next to her on the bench with a painful smile.

Sarah says nothing; holds her breath tight in her chest then presses her palms against the scratchy wood underneath her like it might actually cut. The moment goes. Rachel acts as if she didn’t ask at all, and Sarah forces a one-sided conversation about the weather. She wonders, distantly, if it should feel like progress. But Rachel’s still no closer to forgiving her.

Sarah lays it all out in the shower one morning, standing naked and cold in the lackluster stream as she tells herself the chain of events like it’s some sort of story. Something that happened to someone else. Another person’s hard choice, and their fumbling of the consequences of turning Rachel down. They did their best. That’s what she tells herself. But the soap runs circles around the drain at her feet and she can only pretend for so long – wrapped up in her towel, she’s back to swimming in her own aftermath.

 _I don’t regret it_ , she tells the mirror.

Her reflection is sunburnt. Tired. She watches her lips for a long minute, thinking only of Rachel.

It was the adult choice. It was the one she was supposed to be able to live with.

Friday at breakfast she pulls the last barb from her chest and brings Rachel a cup of tea, Mrs. S in her head – it’s strong, the bag still in, reeking more of home than Sarah thought possible in the humid mess hall. Between Rachel’s thankless hands, it’s a knife. Sarah can’t eat a bite.

“Why do you keep trying?” Naomi asks quietly, a gentle bump to Sarah’s side.

Sarah lets their elbows touch. Finally tears her eyes away from Rachel.

She can see the rest of the question on Naomi’s face as she looks back at the tea: why do you care again, why is she now the angry one, why after a full summer are you still standing in the same pathetic place. Sarah considers it all from the kids’ side and can’t stop the bite of a laugh that comes out.

“I dunno,” she says, chasing soggy Froot Loops around her bowl. “Maybe-”

And that’s all she has, because Rachel’s sipping the tea and Sarah’s stuck on the idea of the two of them crammed into a tent with Krystal and Shay and a big gay elephant and there’s nothing she can do to stop six o’clock from coming around. The rest of the table can’t shut up about their sleepover. Naomi’s still watching Rachel’s hands, contemplative.

“Maybe she’s just… important,” Naomi says, a glance at the back table where her brother sits, finally moving on to something else as Quinn and Afsheen send a toast crust flying down the bench in a fit of laughter.

Sarah should tell them off, but they’re so close to the end of camp it’s not worth it. Nearly everyone in the room’s fooling around. At the boys’ table Paul and Tony are playing some form of camp-appropriate beer pong with Styrofoam cups and a ball of tinfoil, and Art has been serenading one of his kids with an off-key rendition of Old Macdonald, only his version is about every breakfast item his table is in the process of consuming.

There’s a giddiness to the air. Everyone seems to be drinking it in except Sarah and Rachel, who sit with their respective cups of tea and the heavy dread of tonight’s sleepover.

Sarah’s going to _kill_ Krystal when she sees her. There’s no way the older girls came up with this idea on their own – not when last year’s high was the failed egg toss that wrapped up the lackluster picnic. At least another picnic wouldn’t have Sarah facing a night in a tent with the last person who wants to see her alive.

And then there’s Rachel having to spend the night with Krystal and Shay.

Her first thought is to laugh, covering it up with a cough that does nothing to dissuade Ava’s cocked eyebrow. But then it’s pity. However shitty tonight will be for Sarah, it’ll be a thousand times worse for Rachel. And, glancing at Rachel at the end of her table, busy picking the tag of her teabag to shreds, it’s clear she knows this.

 _I’m so sorry_ , Sarah thinks. If she’d kissed her-

But she didn’t. She did what was best.

It doesn’t matter that Rachel can’t look at her without blanching, or that Sarah’s heart has permanently wedged itself between two sharp ribs. This is her summer to grow up. This is her growing up. One day she’ll be able to think about it and it won’t feel like the end of the world.

“So what’s the plan for tonight, hm?” she forces herself to say to Naomi, cheeks painfully pulled into a smile.

Of course she’s had her heart broken before. She’s had bones broken, too, and even by the same people. She should know better than anyone how to pick herself up and move on. The issue isn’t even that there’s nowhere to go – she learned a long time ago that you can disappear while your body stays put.

Naomi taps her chin with the end of her fork, humming in consideration. “Makeovers, probably. Madeleine says the older girls brought a whole bunch of makeup and stuff so we can let them make us into, like, completely different people.”

Sarah could lie; say the issue is the girl part, like she’s never thought about it before. But she’s tired of trying to evade the truth. She’s tired of turning her back on everything, everything, always expecting it to turn its back first.

“Not that we’re not already great,” Madeleine interjects. The girls share a grin that Sarah tries to echo.

“It’ll just be fun to like, see who we are,” Naomi says. “All dolled up.”

“And they _know_ how to do makeup,” Quinn says from her end of the table. “Unlike you, Sarah.”

“Scamp,” Sarah chides, though her heart isn’t in it.

Quinn sees right through her. Taps the table with her fingertips and lets her brow crease.

For a second it’s just the two of them, back in Sarah’s room all those weeks ago, Sarah sick on the bed and Quinn touching each photograph like she could feel the loneliness in every last one of them. _Are you still angry?_ Quinn asked. It isn’t what she’s asking now, eyes on Sarah like the entire room is empty. No. She wants to know about the lack of it. _Why did you stop fighting?_

Briefly, Sarah looks to Rachel: her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose amidst the din as if she’s willed her soul to leave her body. Sarah looks back at Quinn, whose lips press together to keep a response inside.

Maybe the issue is that it’s always been a secret. They always did it in the dark, strapped to the back of grief. And no one can properly mourn something they never name. For Sarah to let it go, she has to face it in the daylight. Rachel has to face it in the daylight. God. See if it destroys her then.

(In an easy world, that’s what they would have needed, all this time. Hold their palms up to the light. See the glow of their dirty skin as the world falls down around them. They both walk away knowing it’s for the best, and while no one can ever look them in the eye again at least they have the rubble that they’ll both know was theirs.)

Really, it’s this:

Rachel had wounds she couldn’t keep shut, and Sarah was the knife she tried to stitch them with. When the sun comes up, Sarah can’t bear to have any more blood on her hands. Even if they both thought that was love.

Sarah knows better now.

 

* * *

 

They take two of the camp vans, the long white passenger vans, piling on top of each other with their overnight bags as two scrawny camp drivers sit nervously in the front seat.

“I don’t mind going into town,” the one driver tells Sarah as she falls into the passenger’s seat. “But these back roads…”

She considers mentioning the alternative, which is the thin, winding path over the Mountains that she’s walked in the dark a little too pissed to know where her feet are, full of snake holes and crooked roots and broken bottles the director pretends don’t exist. But this kid who can barely see over the dashboard wouldn’t be joining them on that expedition. He’s only here because the director wants to minimize the risks of their Friday night fiasco.

Sarah says nothing, in the end. The kid’s eyes fall on the low neckline of her dirty tank top before he flushes and looks away and Sarah tries not to stare at Rachel in the other van, twisted around in conversation with someone in the backseat.

It isn’t a long trip. Half an hour, at best. Still, the vans start up and Sarah’s follows Rachel’s down the bumpy dirt road and Sarah wishes she had headphones to drown out even some of the excitement in the seats behind her. In the air-conditioning any lingering grumpiness that comes from the heat has vanished and all their energy seems to be focused on this sleepover. It’s going to be the best, they’re saying. And then someone starts singing, and they’ve all joined in.

“Great kids,” the driver says to Sarah, only barely audible with the song they’re all shouting.

She forces out a smile. Nods.

It occurs to her that he gets a paycheck just for driving people around all summer, in an air-conditioned van, not having to deal with his own campers or arts and crafts or any of that bullshit. She frowns out at the branches that catch on the windows and reconsiders every single choice she’s made up until this point.

It’d be easier if she knew Rachel was doing the same, in the van ahead. But as far as Sarah can see Rachel’s smiling. Maybe even singing along to her own girls’ song.

Eventually the noise of their tires over the dirt and rocks becomes too much to attempt conversation and the driver lets it go, leaving Sarah to lose herself in the endless expanse of green and ribbons of tree trunk that surrounds them. The kids are still singing, albeit quieter. Or maybe it’s the same volume and she just can’t hear over the unpaved road. Either way it’s not an Alison song and it’s almost pleasant with the greenery and the eerie glow of the forest and Sarah forgets, for a little bit – that they’re headed to a tent with no escape, and that the little glimpse of Rachel she can catch through the back window still hasn’t forgiven her.

By the time they arrive at the senior camp it’s all she can think about: a solid lump in her throat. The vans park haphazardly in a dusty lot by the senior admin building, close enough together for Sarah to have a clear view of Rachel unbuckling her seatbelt with the poise and soft smile of someone whose only focus is her job. The kids. Who bounce into the bright sun with songs still under their tongues.

Rachel exits the van and her loose sleeveless top hangs effortlessly off her body, as if this is a movie and everyone else is only here to set the scene. Rachel slings her bag over one shoulder. Rachel steps onto a patch of packed golden earth. Smiling.

“Sarah!” someone squeals, and Sarah’s forced to break out of the fantasy, confronting the giddy blonde ball of energy who’s now throwing her arms around her.

“Krystal,” she replies with an eighth of the enthusiasm. Her kids are watching the exchange like she’s grown a second head. She wonders, for a second, if she’s ever seen Krystal fully sober. She smells like cotton candy.

When they separate, there’s a fine dusting of glitter down Sarah’s arm.

“Oh, I’m so happy you’re all here,” Krystal says, her voice oozing warmth and more glitter. She claps her hands together and looks around at all the kids laughing and stretching their limbs, her smile unwavering in its genuine enjoyment.

Behind her, Shay hangs back in a clump of young teenage girls, nearly blending in herself with the big floppy hat and tie-dyed romper. Someone, maybe her, has added a beaded fringe to the bottom of the leg holes. When she moves it clacks together, and Sarah thinks of a bell on a cat’s collar meant to warn the birds.

Krystal’s squealing again about something else in a little cluster of Rachel’s kids, close enough to Rachel to wipe the smile from her face. _Yeah_ , Sarah thinks. _You’re getting it. You’re starting to get it_.

One of Rachel’s girls runs to her older sister in Shay’s group, the resemblance uncanny; Clementine’s dark curls are a little rattier, left to fly free in the slight breeze, her sister’s pulled up into a pretty loose bun, but as they catch each other in a giant hug they could easily be twins. Sarah lets her eyes blur and it’s herself and Helena, for a moment. Just a moment.

Her own sister has blonde hair, of course, but at one point she’s sure they looked identical. Maybe they would have looked just like that: mirrored smiles, making up for lost time.

“So it’s a bit of a walk,” Shay says to the whole group, and Sarah tears her eyes away from the moment that isn’t hers. “I’ll let the girls take the lead, since, you know, this is their night. Aara?”

One of the older girls produces a clipboard and a welcoming grin that looks only slightly less threatening on someone other than Alison. She’ll be a counselor in no time, Sarah thinks, as she runs through her introductory speech. All the kids are mesmerized; a combination of the glimmer in her eye and their own anticipation.

Sarah can’t even remember the last time they looked at her like that.

“She makes me feel like such a shitty counselor,” she mutters to Shay, who’s drifted over with the gentle clack of beads.

Shay snickers, bumping her arm into Sarah’s side. “She’s been doing my job the whole summer.”

Shay smells like jasmine, like an incense stick Sarah remembers burning at some boy’s house a long time ago, far enough in the past for it to only tug a little at a string in her chest. There’s a bit of Krystal’s glitter on Shay’s cheek, a smudge of dirt across her collarbone. She’s small, both in size and how she carries herself as they follow the kids, contradicting the wide-brimmed hat on her head. It screams, _notice me_. It says, _I’m the entire world._ And yet Shay folds her shoulders inwards. Lets Sarah take the lead, even as they’re both the ones following.

 _You too?_ Sarah wants to ask. About this entire bloody summer.

But a second later Shay’s grinning at Krystal’s giggle from up ahead, Krystal who’s managed to pull a smile from Rachel’s pressed lips, all over something Sarah missed with her focus on the girl beside her.

“So how’s it been?” Sarah asks. They’re veering into the trees, a marked path that starts behind the administrative building. It’s a forest Sarah doesn’t recognize. In the mottled light, everyone shimmers like the surface of the lake on a good day.

Shay smiles, lets out a sigh. “You know,” she says, and her hand’s on Sarah’s arm until it’s gone again. “Busy.”

“Drama?” Sarah asks with a raised eyebrow, because she wants to hear it. That she wasn’t the only one.

Krystal seems to have made it her mission to turn Rachel into someone she isn’t, drowning her in a crowd of tweens as she clutches her hand and pulls her into whatever story requires that many gestures. All Sarah can see is the back of Rachel’s head and her hand in someone else’s. Mostly, she sees the hand. It’s nauseating.

“I mean, there’s always something with this crowd, between the counselors and the campers. But yeah. There were some… moments,” Shay says with a laugh that’s almost the opposite.

Sarah winces in sympathy, barely avoiding a hole in the path where someone’s dug up a sizeable rock. It’s enough to have her look ahead, at the path that expands and constricts at whim, growth of the trees manipulating their trajectory. Mostly she looks at the front of the group so she doesn’t have to see Rachel in the middle, molding herself into Krystal’s audience for what seems like Sarah’s benefit only. Fuck her too.

“You should join the junior camp,” Sarah says, her voice laced with the sweet tone that makes boys drop everything for her.

Shay glances over from under the brim of her hat, not hiding the stroke of her gaze down Sarah’s body and back up again. Sarah smiles, her teeth out.

“Didn’t someone like, almost die this year?” Shay asks, putting noticeable effort into keeping her tone breezy. “Appendicitis or something?”

They’re a step closer, and Sarah doesn’t miss the way Shay lets their fingers brush.

Rachel’s still facing forward, but the touch is enough for something electric to course its way through Sarah’s chest.

“Yeah, some girl got pretty sick, had to go to the hospital,” Sarah replies, and it’s so far from the truth that she believes it for a second, that she was that removed from it, and she and Shay share a look as if Sarah’s only connection is that she heard it through the grapevine.

“Jason cut off the tip of his pinky, don’t know if you heard about that,” Shay says like they’re trading gossip, as her pinky trails its way up the side of Sarah’s wrist.

“Of course he did,” Sarah snorts.

They both laugh. They’re other people.

Rachel glances back at them and Sarah’s warm from Shay’s soft touch and the way Rachel’s eyes go straight to the lack of space between them. _Are you jealous?_ Sarah wants to ask. _Does this hurt?_ And even though Rachel’s vacant expression doesn’t change, even though she passes it off as a quick headcount of the group as they move up the slight incline, Sarah’s insides burn with triumph.

She’s terrible, with the facts on the table.

Rachel has every right to hate her; every right to befriend Krystal, who strives to see the best in everyone; every right to want Sarah to suffer for shooting her down.

For a second, Sarah lets herself picture a summer fling that ends in any other way than this. With Shay’s touch still tingling on her skin it’s easy to imagine – it’d be sweet, popsicles on the dock, naming constellations in the dark, and every kiss would feel like helium. When she went home she’d take it off like a dirty friendship bracelet, left as a memory in a box in her closet. It wouldn’t feel… like this. The knife that Rachel twists every time Sarah thinks about it.

“Maybe it’d be fun, the junior camp,” Shay says a couple minutes later, deep enough into the forest that the light falls down in a hazy green.

Sarah shoves her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs. “Yeah, but you’re so good here. I’d hate to see that die.”

She keeps her eyes straight ahead, even as Shay’s mouth opens and then shuts again. The sound is a tiny breath. It’s all they need to fall into a silence that lasts them the rest of the walk, and Shay doesn’t touch her again.

 

* * *

 

If anything, Rachel’s father’s events taught her how to give a good performance. She knows exactly when to smile. She knows the right tilt of her head, the proper subtle touch, to make a stranger feel not only heard but cared for, all in an empty three minute conversation. She can pull her true feelings all the way up into a tiny cavern in the back of her mind, so far removed from reality that she only exists as a blank canvas on which anyone can paint what they want to see.

It got her through high school. It’s getting her through Friday night on a barren campsite, a good ten minutes from the nearest cabin.

Which is where Shay and Krystal will be staying – they neglected to mention that earlier, giving Rachel and Sarah the impression it’d be all four of them in the counselors’ tent, the truth coming out during a dinner of hot dogs and corn over an open fire while Rachel fought every urge inside her to jump into the fire pit.

“The senior girls are old enough to camp out on their own,” Shay said, turning her corn cob until all of it burned. “It’s only the younger ones that need counselor supervision, otherwise we’d all get the bunk beds.”

Krystal added a smiley, “too bad, huh?” that had Rachel clutching her hot dog stick until it nearly snapped in her hand.

But she’s _doing_ this. She keeps her face entirely neutral, through camp songs and a game of cops  & robbers that scatters the kids through the woods and someone’s awful suggestion of makeovers that has Krystal itching to do Sarah.

 _Be strong_ , Rachel wills, if only as her last hope. Sarah gives in.

Shay looks at Rachel like they’ve had several conversations in the past and she wasn’t bumping hands with Sarah the whole walk to the campsite. Which is to say: friendly. Which is to say: nonthreatening. And yet Rachel sees right through her anyway, with a returned smile that’s just as feigned.

“Can I do you, Rachel?” Shay asks, scooting closer down the nearby log until she’s close enough for Rachel to slap her. “I love your eyebrows, by the way.”

Sarah’s already making herself comfortable in the dirt while Krystal settles in the space between her splayed legs, nearly on top of her with a makeup kit far too large to exist at camp. It glitters just as much as Krystal’s cheeks. Pink, because of course it is.

“Yeah, come on, Rachel,” Sarah says, echoed by Krystal.

With all their eyes on her Rachel feels like an invasive species; they have shears and pesticides, and she exhales and wills the sun to sink from the sky any faster than its snail’s pace so they’re forced to give up due to lack of light. No such luck. It’s the brightest quarter-to-eight she’s ever experienced, and she grits her teeth.

Even the children are joining in the activity – each senior girl seems to have found her own miniature, little clumps forming on rolled-out sleeping bags as they settle in to be transformed.

It’s terrible. No child of ten or eleven should ever feel the need to wear makeup, and yet the idea of being done up into someone they don’t recognize has them so giddy they’re bouncing on their heels. She looks around until she spots the one kid who would devastate her to have joined in: Sahar, who, thankfully, seems to be focused on a caddy of nail polish and Marlow’s makeover next to her.

“I won’t bite,” Shay says, bringing Rachel back to her current dilemma.

Krystal has a fine powdered _something_ all over Sarah’s skin, already taking away the pieces of her that Rachel’s come to see as a permanent part of the package – the little blemishes, the dark circles under her eyes, her zillionth faded sunburn. It’s unsettling. As if one large brush can wipe away the summer.

“Fine,” she says, finally looking back to Shay who lights up with delight. “But not on the ground.”

“No, of course,” Shay says. She comes over with her makeup caddy and straddles the log, gesturing for Rachel to do the same. Face to face, Rachel regrets her decision even more. And then Shay’s hand slips Rachel’s hair behind her ears.

“It’s important to start with a clean canvas,” she’s saying, as if Rachel’s never worn makeup before in her life.

She considers telling her how many events include photographers, how many people have had her pose with important men who only know her by the feel of her lower back. But it makes no difference with Shay’s focus on wiping Rachel down to nothing.

This is what most girls grew up with – they went to sleepovers, gossiped about their crushes, touched each other’s faces until they couldn’t recognize each other anymore. There was eyeliner and lipstick and crying and heartfelt confessions in the dark, and Rachel knows because she overheard it the next day at school. Because she read it in books. Because she watched the movies. How cruel, to only now be receiving her youthful experiences; now when the hand that delivers it also holds a poisoned apple.

She has red lips when it’s over. Shay holds up a tiny hand mirror, and Rachel’s smile is the color of blood.

“What do you think?” Shay asks.

The eyeliner is a sharp wing, pulling Rachel’s eyes into a shape she hasn’t seen before. It’s deadlier. A warning sign. There’s an art to this, she thinks. Being able to find the truth in someone.

“I hardly recognize myself,” she says, and Shay takes it as a compliment. She squeals as kids come over to look and they squeal as well and Rachel’s never heard herself be called beautiful by so many people who mean it without wanting anything.

Even Sarah, who’s unrecognizable with the smoky shimmer framing her hesitant eyes. She has pink lips, though; the color of bubblegum and twice as shiny. Krystal can see it too, then – that Sarah’s soft on the inside, softer than she’ll ever admit, and all she wants is for someone to see it as a strength.

“What’s next?” Rachel says roughly, hauling herself off the log. She leaves Sarah and Krystal behind her in the dirt and finally untucks her hair from behind her ears.

Shay stumbles to catch up. “Aara?” she says and the girl with the clipboard appears out of nowhere.

“Low ropes course then ghost stories at the cave, then we circle back for smores and pyjamas,” Aara says, reading down her list.

Every item seems to thrill the group more than the last, only Rachel resisting the groan that desperately wants to come out.

“Bug spray,” she tells her girls, because she’s the one who will have to deal with them tomorrow when their itchiness gets out of hand.

Sarah’s girls dive into their bags as well, having spent long enough with Rachel this summer to listen to what she has to say. She’s not the one who disappeared on them, after all; she was there in the aftermath, smoothing out the lumps and bumps until their counselor decided she cared again.

Rachel brushes invisible dirt from her shorts as the sea of sleeping bags becomes a cloud of bug spray that likely eradicates any insect in a five-mile radius. The older girls prepare themselves similarly, Clementine’s sister using her spray on Clementine, all reminding the younger ones to grab their water bottles and a sweater just in case.

“Wanna share?” Sahar asks as she skips over to Rachel, holding out her bottle of bug spray. Rachel only has to nod before Sahar says _shut your eyes_ and sprays any part of Rachel’s body the bugs might find delicious – which is nearly everything, down to the back of her neck.

“Thank-you,” she says after, even as Krystal, Shay, and Sarah look at her like she’s grown soft on them.

Sarah’s legs are covered in scratched-open mosquito bites so Rachel has no idea why she wouldn’t take advantage of their only line of defense. Foolish. Everything about her, foolish.

“You look good without the lipstick too, you know,” Sahar says as Rachel follows her back over to her bag, mostly wanting to get away from the other counselors.

Marlow, kneeling on the sleeping bag beside Sahar’s, glances up with an earnest nod at the comment.

“Really?” Rachel muses.

Shay covered up her under-eye bags as well; her little blemishes.

Sahar zips up her backpack and holds out a hand to help Marlow to her feet. “It’s nice, but so’s your regular face.”

“Just different,” Marlow agrees.

“Well,” Rachel says, unable to extinguish the lightness expanding in her chest. “I suppose you’ve already picked partners for the walk, but may I join the two of you?”

They grin at her in a way that never fails to fill her with amazement, that children who have no reason to care other than proximity would offer up such a look, and link arms, Sahar presenting one of hers to Rachel.

“We’ll be a group of three,” she says despite Rachel’s lack of preparedness and her backpack still sitting abandoned on the log.

She’ll have to drag them back and she has to stoop a little to link arms properly but none of that matters. All that concerns her is what song they’ll want to sing while walking. She’ll sing along, of course, because that’s her repayment; they give her a space where she doesn’t have to act, and she gives them the counselor they deserve.

If she forgets about the makeup, in this moment she almost likes herself.

 

* * *

 

After the fire is smothered and everyone climbs into sleeping bags, one of the older girls promising a story about a queen who hangs upside-down in the sky if the group stays quiet, Rachel finally follows Sarah to the small tent a good thirty feet from where the campers will be until morning.

She’s still finding marshmallow on her as she walks; it’s stuck to the cuff of her shorts, in a suspiciously fingerprint-like shape that matches up with the five minutes Evie spent hanging off of her while they learned new songs they’re not allowed to sing around anyone younger. _The most important part of being a good role model_ , Clementine’s sister Penelope told the group, _is being able to put someone else’s wellbeing before your own entertainment._

Penelope asked: what do you think that means? The kids had answers. Hands raised like they hadn’t just been singing about flying underpants, eager to impress the teens who went to such great lengths to plan this night for them. Rachel mostly thought about Sarah’s rules at the start of the summer – you make a mess you clean it. If you aren’t making friends, you’re making enemies. All feelings are valid.

She scratches off the remnants of marshmallow and flicks it out from under her nails. In front of her, Sarah’s stopped at the tent’s entrance.

She wanted to ask, at the fire, if Sarah still stood behind those rules now. It would have felt good for a full thirty seconds; she believes that. Then Sarah would have looked at her. She would have stared like she’s doing now.

“Look, I had no idea,” she says, again, a hand cupping the back of her neck.

Rachel sighs. Her fingers are sticky now, despite abstaining from smores at the fire earlier. All she’d done was let Evie and Sahar sit on her legs and watch meaningless faces turn soft in the flames, forgetting again and again until Evie smiled up at her that the lipstick was still there. Whatever Shay used, it certainly passes the blowjob test Rachel unfortunately had to hear about in high school washrooms. Those girls and their clouds of floral spray would be pleased.

“I could… sleep out here, if you want,” Sarah offers when Rachel says nothing, mistaking her silence for a response.

Really, Rachel’s just refusing to think about it. If they don’t go into the tent it doesn’t have to happen. They could stand right here all night and hold their tongues until the sun comes up, covered in new insect bites but more or less alive.

A mosquito hovers near her bare thigh just to remind her how enjoyable it would be. She swats it away, but barely.

“No,” she finally responds, tired to her own ears. “No one’s sleeping in the dirt. We’re not children.”

The children themselves should be fine with the sheer volume of bug spray they’ve doused themselves in, and she can’t truly see it making much of a difference with how many insect bites are already adorning their skin. But she’s tired of tearing her own skin to bits just to satisfy a temporary urge. And she can’t ignore the temptation if it’s there.

“You sure?” Sarah says. She shifts. Her duffel bag bumps at her ankle and in the distance the older girl finally starts her tale about that boastful queen.

A woman with pride must always be punished, of course. Rachel could tell the story herself. But they don’t want her myths anymore; they have new blood to worship.

“Go,” she prompts, irritated. The longer they stand out here the more mosquitoes notice them. “Get in. Now you’re just wasting my time.”

Sarah doesn’t react to her comment, which is as telling as anything. But she pushes aside the unzipped flap and disappears a second later, and Rachel relishes the momentary solitude before following her into their cage.

It’s blue – eerily so. The blue casts its light over everything, Sarah unrolling her sleeping bag, the lantern switched on in the corner, as if enough of it could mask the plastic off-gassing it tries to dilute. Rachel’s sure a minute inside that she’ll remember this scent forever. This and the way Sarah tries not to watch her sink to her knees, as if the silence is something to be ashamed of.

“You know,” Sarah says, hyper-focused on inching her flat pillow into some arbitrarily exact position, “we could’ve easily fit Krystal and Shay in here too.”

Rachel actually stops in the middle of unpacking the rest of her duffel just to blink at her.

“What, in the six inches of space between our sleeping bags?” She doesn’t mean for it to come out as a joke, but they both end up smiling. Hiding it.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Sarah says, her mouth still twisted in that sheepish smirk.

If it were anyone else Rachel would mention the likelihood of them waking up on top of each other given how the shape and small spread of tarpaulin floor forces them to set up so close together, but the image alone sends something sharp and cold shooting through her chest and she bites down on it. Hard enough for her jaw to clench.

Sarah’s smile disappears. She returns to yanking items out of her duffel bag and piling them in the tiny gap between her sleeping bag and the side of the tent, face shifting from regret to resolve in the tainted blue light.

A sweatshirt. A flashlight. A worn deck of cards.

Rachel considers the few card games she knows: gin rummy, euchre, solitaire. It’s all steeped in her lunch breaks with the caretaker back in high school, correcting his crossword attempts as he taught her new ways to be ruthless. She liked winning. She liked winning after so many losses, when the two of them both found pride in it. But. Prideful women. She’s all too aware what those lunches cost her.

Sarah catches her looking, the box of cards nearly falling apart at the edges as Rachel gathers up enough energy to tear her eyes away.

 _You don’t want to play, do you?_ Sarah’s expression asks.

Rachel digs in her bag until she finds the hand mirror and pack of makeup wipes. Sarah puts the two together. A hand goes up to her own face, as if she’s just now remembering the dark glitter on her eyelids and ring of soft pink at the edges of her lips. It’s fine; she can keep it on all night, letting it clog her skin to likely look even better tomorrow. Sarah does that. She lives for it.

All Rachel wants is to take off the red lipstick and see her eyes without the sharp black wings.

She tries to steady the mirror on her knees, brought up to her chest in an uncomfortable pose. The mirror falls. Sarah picks up her deck of cards and moves it between hands, politely keeping quiet as Rachel tries and tries again. She wants to _see_ , is the thing. She needs to see that it’s off of her, and she needs to see it in the process of going. Because all she has, right now, is an image of red: red lipstick in the tile grout, yet another piece of a puzzle she never asked for.

“Oh, for _crying out loud_ ,” she mutters as the mirror falls again, landing soft in a puff of sleeping bag.

It’s barely light enough in here to see as is, with the lantern and the blue, but at the very least she should be able to make out the shape of her face. She knows what red looks like in a cloud of static. She knows what the absence will bring.

“Rachel,” Sarah croaks, a hand reaching out.

She has the cards in the other, tight. Rachel stares at the outstretched hand only inches from her arm as if it might suddenly emit a bright white light and send them all into another orbit – and then Sarah sighs and lets the hand fall, joining Rachel’s mirror on the sleeping bag in another quiet defeat.

“Christ, just-” Sarah bunches her fingers in a fist and then loosens them again. “I can’t watch this; let me help. Please. If not for you, then for me.”

Rachel knows she’s expecting a snippy _and why would I do anything for you_ in return, but they’re already a foot apart in a cheap tent with the rest of the night stretching long and slick ahead of them. Sometimes Rachel grows tired of being stubborn. Sometimes it’s just… easiest to give up. Let the loss hit her like she deserves.

She hands over the mirror. Sarah holds it up and then shifts the lantern closer until Rachel’s face has the kindest part of the light, and Rachel pretends she doesn’t notice Sarah’s knee brushing against hers.

It’s only one makeup wipe, anyway. A smear of blood across her lips. A pull of black over her eyes. She rubs it all away until the only face in the small round reflection is her own, her young face of eighteen, unable to hide from her gaze and from Sarah’s cautious glance over the mirror’s edge.

If she wanted she could fall back into her own confession a week ago – they’re in the dark, after all, and she’s stripped herself naked right in front of the only person who matters. But she can’t handle that shame right now. Not when there’s so much more of it welling up inside her, for reasons she hasn’t even explained, and Sarah wouldn’t know how to take.

 _Think about the one part of someone that you love, and then think of it as a knife that gets twisted back around to gut you every time you want to love them again._ She couldn’t say it if she wanted to.

She balls up the makeup wipe in her hands, smudging red across her palms, and Sarah still doesn’t lower the mirror. It’s funny, in a twisted way. The idea of the two of them in another silence and Sarah’s only response a shard of glass that catches the worst of Rachel. They couldn’t plan it if they tried. She smudges the red further. Sarah’s hand trembles.

“There are so many events through my father’s work,” Rachel finds herself saying, softly, if only to not have to look at herself anymore. “Galas. Dinners. Everyone all dressed up. If he had a wife…”

She presses her hands together. Smothers the red. Sarah watches as if it’s a corpse they thought they buried.

“I’m eighteen now, so I suppose it isn’t as bad as it once was,” Rachel finishes. Lightly. It isn’t her story at all. What she’s really saying is the lipstick, refusing to let her lose it.

Sarah puts down the mirror.

“When you think about it, do you feel sick?” she asks, in a voice that tells Rachel she knows exactly how it feels.

For a moment it’s the two of them and all the hands that have ever touched them. It’s a tent full of painful smiles. The blue light can’t do anything for the weight of men who only ever knew how to take.

Rachel exhales, and her breath has waited a long time to be released. “Well,” she says. “Only if I think about it.”

Sarah lets go of the cards. Rachel lets go of the wipe. Sarah scoots forward just enough for both her knees to touch Rachel’s, and neither of them are looking at the lipstick when Sarah’s fingers make their way between Rachel’s palms. They’re just watching the journey. They’re watching it unfold in the silence, and it almost doesn’t hurt.

 

* * *

 

“War,” Sarah says, and Rachel scowls.

“You _must_ be cheating. What is this, the third? Fourth?”

She lays her cards down anyway, knowing before either of them flip the last one that it will betray her. It’s chance, Sarah keeps saying. But no. It’s all karma. Rachel’s pile grows thinner by the minute and Sarah gleefully absorbs her winnings.

“Third,” she says, her smile contagious, “but we don’t need to count. It could easily flip back in your favor. Believe me, I’ve lost a fuckload of games like this.”

Rachel eyes their two piles of cards – hers down to less than ten, Sarah’s the rest of the faded deck – and lets out a soft _hmm_. Sarah grins. Rachel rolls her eyes so she doesn’t do the same.

They’re only playing because Sarah wanted to teach her something, and Rachel insisted it had to be a game the sixes haven’t already figured out. Sadly, that eliminated a good chunk of Sarah’s repertoire. Rachel could have taught her something useful; she offered, but Sarah was already shuffling and inching her sleeping bag that much closer.

They’re not… resolved. They haven’t talked at all, actually, outside of a polite game plan for changing into their sleepwear. (Sarah went outside, braving the breeze and the forest. Rachel almost wanted her to come back in early.) Sarah suggested cards and Rachel had nothing to offer in exchange that wasn’t a wound so they waded into the endlessness of a game that clearly favors the stronger player.

“Chance,” Sarah says again, swallowing up Rachel’s queen with an ace.

Eight cards left. One of them might be a king, at least, if the part of her that’s been focused on the game and not the glimmer that comes with each of Sarah’s smiles has really been paying attention. Sarah takes a three. A nine. Rachel wants to give her the rest of them.

 _What do we do when it’s over?_ she’s about to ask when Sarah cries out, “war!”

It’s two fives against each other, and Rachel dully places three cards face-down on her sleeping bag. With the next one flipped, she’ll have a single card left in her deck. A single last chance. It must be what the cat feels when it’s reached its ninth life. (The anticipation, too?) (Surely. Surely it’s ready for it all to be over.)

“Ready?” Sarah says. She has her card in position to be flipped, albeit reluctantly.

There should be joy in winning, Rachel wants to tell her. She’s the one who calls the shots. She’s the one who walks away unburdened, not having to listen to the shame of her own pitiful request loop in her head. _But I want to try. Even if it destroys me._

Sarah uncrosses her legs, filling the tent with the swishing sound of pyjama pants against sleeping bag while everything jostles with her. The card remains pinched between her fingers when she stills.

“One-two-three flip,” Rachel says, but neither of them budge.

Something rustles leaves not far from the tent and it could be an animal of any size, anything looking to make a meal of two girls in their pyjamas, easily deserving of a better reaction than Sarah’s halfhearted raised eyebrow. Rachel turns her head in the general direction just for the show of it, unable to take her eyes off of Sarah as Sarah stares back.

“Do you hate me?” Sarah finally asks.

It’s heartbreaking. Rachel presses her card into the sleeping bag so she doesn’t betray herself and slap a hand to her chest, but she’s sure her face does a good enough job of emoting her reaction based on the slight dip of Sarah’s chin.

“You have every right to,” she continues. “What I… Anyone would, in your position. I thought you would’ve killed me by now.”

Rachel removes her fingers from the card and tucks them carefully under her thigh. “Contrary to popular belief, I am not a murderess.”

Sarah chuckles, at least. Rachel doesn’t know when that became something she wanted.

Really, she _should_ hate her. Sarah whipped right back around and tried to act like it was all fine, bringing coffee in the mess hall and starting empty conversations when circumstance forced them together, and Rachel’s had a full week of doing her best to ignore her. Yet they’re playing cards in a tent, Sarah’s legs extending onto Rachel’s sleeping bag like this is where she was meant to be all along. Sarah’s eyes are round as if Rachel’s answer is life or death.

Rachel checks the card she played: it’s the king. Sarah’s still clutching hers like it’ll protect her from whatever Rachel decides to throw her way.

“I reserve my hatred for my father,” Rachel responds after letting an eternity swell up between them. “And the men who keep his company. You…”

Cosima would be proud of the hand gesture that wiggles its way into the air. Sarah lets out a breath of a laugh and the blue light catches a shine of tears in her eyes. It’s startling, only in that Rachel briefly witnesses her own importance in someone else’s life. One would think in eighteen years she’d have learned what to do with this information. Regrettably, she can only dig her nails into her skin and look away.

“You already know how I feel,” she mutters, speaking to her neatly folded pile of clothes at the side of the tent.

She didn’t bring a single book with her. She wonders if Sarah noticed, and then she wonders if it means anything. Maybe nothing; maybe just that she didn’t want any book to witness her like this.

Sarah’s toes curl, the remnants of black polish clinging on for dear life.

“I know how you felt,” Sarah says, emphasis on the last word. “And then I didn’t kiss you. I’ve had a whole bloody week to sit with that. I called my mum, I cried in the shower, I- And you just kept ignoring me. D’you think I’ve enjoyed this?”

“Do you think _I_ have?” Rachel hears herself hurling back.

It’s raw enough to give her secondhand embarrassment until she realizes she really was the one who said it, and then her cheeks are hot as she brings her knees up to bury her face. She can still see Sarah’s curled toes through the gap in skin and it eats another acidic hole in her.

“No,” Sarah stutters. “I mean-”

She shifts on the sleeping bag and interrupts everyone’s thoughts with that god-awful swishing sound again, and it’s only as Rachel feels the heat of her body that she realizes Sarah’s movement was to come closer. For _whatever_ reason. She doesn’t touch her, but it makes no difference; all Rachel can feel now is the radiating warmth of Sarah’s presence like a fire in the room next door. Either way the doorknob’s too hot to touch. There’s no escape.

“I mean I only said it because you shouldn’t be so… so ruined,” Sarah says in a tone that burns. “What you deserve…”

She trails off and Rachel can only think of her conversation with Beth the other week: _you deserve to be happy_. She meant it for Beth. She really did. But it’s different for herself – she’s lived her whole life aware of what’s attainable and what’s best left ignored because there’s no use in hoping, and from the moment they arrived in Canada happiness wasn’t something that extended its hand to her.

What she deserves is to be buried with her mistakes. A coffin full of every foolish hope that ever bore a hole in her and no bell tied to her finger to alert the living that she’s still one of them.

They buried her mother in frozen earth, so Rachel knows these things are possible.

No.

It was raining – the earth was swollen, and it took her greedily. Devoured her whole.

“Rachel,” Sarah tries again, and this time she puts her fingers on Rachel’s neck. Everything about her is soft; Rachel thought as a child that fire must be gentle, to destroy that gracefully, and now she knows for sure.

She lifts her head. The tent has grown dimmer, a darker shade of blue. Sarah makes a jagged shadow in the path of the lantern’s feeble light.

 _Show me a dog_ , Rachel thinks. _Show me a rabbit. Show me the girl who tries to save them both._

“You never played your card,” Rachel says.

Sarah stiffens. “What?”

Rachel turns enough to see the ruins of their game of war, smudged like the blood of a hangnail from both of their shifting. Rachel’s king still waits for the verdict. Sarah follows her gaze and then puts it together, visibly attempting to mentally locate her card before she has to move. She’s sitting on it.

“Play it,” Rachel says.

Sarah looks at it. Looks at the king, and their pair of fives caught in the middle of a battle they didn’t want to fight.

“It’s a ten,” she says, holding the card tight to her chin.

Rachel scoffs. “If you _want_ to see me commit a murder…”

“All right,” Sarah concedes, and drops the card so it flutters to the floor in the most dramatic fashion. Just to spite them, it lands face-down. “Jesus. What does it matter? It’s not like you’ll win the game anyway.”

Smugness lurches inside Rachel and she knows it appears, ugly on her face. “I’m sorry, what happened to _it could easily flip back in your favor_? Or was that a lie?”

Sarah smacks the card and sends another two flying across the tent. “ _Rachel_. Do you ever let anything go?”

“I can’t afford to,” Rachel shoots back, hating it before it’s even all out. Sarah’s eyes are fixed on her, wary. “It’s all I ever have left, okay? All I get are grudges. Everything else – everyone else – goes.”

To finish off her childish temper tantrum, she reaches over and turns off the lantern.

They’re plunged into darkness.

Rachel sends the rest of the cards flying for good measure and crams her way into her sleeping bag and Sarah doesn’t stop her.

 

* * *

 

They stay in the dark for longer than Rachel would like to admit – it’s safe, might be what they’re both thinking, it’s a cloak, but the silence is a dagger.

And then Sarah turns on the lantern.

She hasn’t even _moved_ since Rachel turned it off; Rachel is curled up in her sleeping bag and Sarah’s just sitting there, staring down at her nails. It feels like a game that siblings play. The way they can both convince themselves they won after an argument. Of course Rachel’s only guessing, having grown up alone. She asked her parents, once, in England, if they’d have another baby. _Oh, Rachel, you’re more than enough for us_ , they’d said. As it turns out, more than enough meant too much. At least for her mother.

She rolls over so she’s fully facing Sarah, now, a hand tucked just under her chin, feeling small in the sleeping bag and smaller still when Sarah looks up.

“You had a mother you lost, too,” Rachel says very softly.

Sarah’s lips pull in as if this is the last thing she expected to hear. And then she considers it, pensive.

“I think the difference is,” she says, running her nails along her pyjama bottoms, “you had one who’d been there to love you.”

Rachel can feel her heart growing heavy at the thought of Sarah’s childhood. How many homes let her think it was her fault? How many adults looked the other way? Rachel has had a mere seven weeks with children who share no blood with her and she could take home any one of them if they needed it. She’d love them. She’d let them know they were wanted, and it was never, ever, their fault.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Sarah says, as she lifts her shoulders in a little shrug.

 _It should_ , Rachel wants to say. _You should get to be upset about the ways the world let you down._

“Do you ever think about who she was?” she asks instead.

Because she thinks about who her mother might have been almost every day. If she’d gotten better, if Rachel had found her any sooner, if they’d saved her and she lived through it and someone finally cured her. Rachel used to dream that the two of them went back to England instead, that first year, and her mother laughed all the time. At a certain point it became too much to bear, and then she stopped dreaming about her mother entirely.

Sarah tilts her head at Rachel like she knows exactly what she’s thinking. “A few times I did,” she says. “I’m eighteen, so I guess I could find her if I had to. But I don’t know. No use in going back to where I wasn’t wanted.”

“That’s terrible,” Rachel says before she can stop herself.

“I had a shrink who said the same thing,” Sarah chuckles. “Said it was my _trauma_.”

Rachel tries to picture Sarah in a therapist’s office and can’t even conjure up the image. She’d sooner trash the place than sit still in some old armchair, pouring her heart out. Rachel herself was at least a child when she was forced to see someone and had a bin full of dolls to put between her and the funny-smelling man.

(He’d watched her anyway, though. Like she’d give away clues in the games she played. So she walked the dolls around in circles and pretended they wanted nothing more than that.)

“Do you think Beth will see someone?” she asks.

Sarah’s face hardens. “She has to. After doing that? She couldn’t just-”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, because Sarah lets it hang.

And then they’re both staring at some empty dim space in the middle of the tent like it’s full of a language they don’t want to understand.

Rachel tries to find something soft inside herself. Something small that she can hold onto, because she knows she’s about to need it. There isn’t anything left to bring up that isn’t the one thing she’s avoiding, and she’s already turned off the lantern once tonight. She can’t pull the same stale trick twice.

Sarah finally unfolds herself from her uncomfortable sitting position and sticks her legs into her sleeping bag, very slowly inching her way into it as they both become aware that she never moved it back after the card game. They never _finished_ the card game. There are cards everywhere except the space they had them, and Rachel will never know how big Sarah’s lie was. How grandly she ended up winning in the end.

Finally they’re in their sleeping bags facing each other – Sarah’s lips are a foot away, still shining pink at the edges, and she presses them together like she doesn’t know what else to do with them.

 _You could kiss me_ , Rachel thinks, but she knows she doesn’t deserve it.

She could tell her she was wrong, that it wouldn’t destroy her, but Sarah would still know the truth.

They’re quiet. Outside, crickets sing through the dark.

If they unzipped the tent flap they could see the stars.

“You know,” Sarah just about whispers, tucked into the mouth of her sleeping bag. “You never needed all that makeup. Shay shouldn’t have bothered.”

Rachel raises one eyebrow, a feat with it smushed into her pillow.

A flush creeps up Sarah’s cheeks. “I mean that you’re beautiful without it. Like- like this. Just you.”

She’s nearly completely red when she finishes, and Rachel can feel the same heat threatening to overtake her own face. She’s suddenly very glad Krystal and Shay are in their little cabin somewhere off in the forest.

“But only horizontal,” Rachel painfully kids, because if she has to give a serious response she might combust. Sarah’s smile almost sets her on fire anyway.

“Sometimes you say very dirty things without realizing, Rachel Duncan,” Sarah murmurs, and Rachel’s eyes widen as she realizes what she means. 

“ _God_ ,” she laments.

“I like you vertical, too,” Sarah pushes, her grin the cutest cruel thing Rachel’s ever seen.

She reaches behind her until her hand hits something, a hairbrush, and then hurls it in Sarah’s direction. The poor aim is intentional but Sarah still flinches when it bounces off the tent wall and lands at her feet, as if Rachel actually wanted to take her eye out.

“Hey! Speaking of murder,” Sarah says quite huffily.

“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have missed,” Rachel responds.

She turns until she’s on her back so she can direct her smile at the top of the tent instead, not wanting to reward Sarah even as she hears her exhaling.

“So you don’t hate me then,” Sarah inquires, carefully.

Rachel folds her hands over her chest, filling the space between her pyjama top and the soft inside layer of the sleeping bag. Her heart pulses just under her skin: it’s doing its best to keep a steady rhythm despite everything else working against it, and she gives it a silent thanks. So much stubborn hope indeed.

“No,” she says, after enough time has passed for Sarah to know she means it. “I don’t hate you.”

Quietly, Sarah says, “It’d be easier if you did.”

That’s the problem. If Rachel had only contempt after what Sarah did, they could sit here and stew and it wouldn’t be painful. No one would be waiting for the other to ask the right question. Rachel wouldn’t have to wonder, if there were any words that could take back what Sarah said and make Rachel stronger. They’d get through this final week and never have to see each other again.

Rachel watches a tiny bug weave a path along the top of the tent, unable to discern if it’s on the inside or outside. For a moment it feels like the most pressing matter and she wonders if Sarah would have an answer before shutting her eyes. The blue light is gone; it’s only darkness.

“If I hated you I’d never get to tell you I still want you, even if you don’t want me,” she says to the pinpricks of light that twist themselves into shapes behind her eyelids.

She hears Sarah’s breath catch.

“I just don’t want to _destroy_ you, Rachel, Jesus, I didn’t stop _wanting_ you,” Sarah says, voice rasping over the last few words.

“But if I wanted that?” Rachel opens her eyes to the blue and the tiny bug in another place and the absolute nothing that hangs above her.

Sarah sighs; a true, painful sigh. “Okay, I’m just trying to, like, put your wellbeing before my enjoyment, or whatever. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

 _Entertainment_ , Rachel doesn’t correct.

Because Sarah doesn’t see her as that. She’s not a game to her. She’s not something to be won, or to manipulate into another layer of loss. At least not intentionally.

“You don’t need to save my life, Sarah.” She curls her fingers over the space where her heartbeat is strongest. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay.”

_If you kissed me you’d feel it. You’d feel that I want to stay._

She turns her head just enough to see Sarah in her sleeping bag, moving the whole thing as her chest rises and falls with each breath. She’s on her back too, now; Rachel doesn’t know when that happened.

“I pulled Beth out of the water,” Sarah says, and then her head turns so she’s looking back at Rachel.

They’re still on their backs; they’re still corpse-like. Any old person could slip them right into a coffin.

“Maybe she was hoping you would,” Rachel offers. Sometimes she thinks her mother hoped the same. Sometimes she thinks the real tragedy was that nobody knew it didn’t make a difference with the pills she took, and it turned out to be an accident after all. She’d really like to believe it. She wants to believe, in the end, her mother wanted to live.

A hand snakes out of Sarah’s sleeping bag and wipes her eyes. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice. Wouldn’t change that it was a fucked up thing to do, though.”

One day Rachel will be able to separate Beth from her mother. One day she’ll think of a lake and it won’t mean drowning. One day she’ll crush lipstick underfoot and it will just be a mess. Maybe Sarah will even hold her hand.

Rachel exhales through her nose. It’s warm when the air hits her chest, and she hadn’t realized she was cold.

“Would you do it again?” she finds herself asking.

Maybe because it’s getting chillier. Maybe because she can see enough of Sarah for it to feel like it should always be this way, the two of them lying side by side as the night creeps on around them. She wants to want lesser things; things that are attainable, that want her back.

Sarah says, “Yeah. A hundred times over.”

Rachel says, “If I asked you to kiss me, would you say no again?”

Sarah shuts her eyes. She shakes her head. “Guess we all want to be stronger than we are, huh,” she says.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. Sarah’s eyes open, and she’s gutted. “I’m asking.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Rachel_ ,” Sarah whispers. She places her hands on her face like she can’t stand to look at her, a soft groan escaping her lips. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

Inside her chest, Rachel’s heart lurches, scraping the sides as if now covered in calluses. From Sarah; from a summer of her reaching out and pulling back and reaching out and pulling back and even though her touch was gentle the repetition rubbed everything raw.

Rachel imagines it as Sarah’s hands going over the surface of her heart so many times it’s now pilled like an old sweater, and she’ll have to cut off the consequences of having worn something for far longer than it could manage. Each fuzzy pill a point of connection between them: severed, one by one, as Rachel runs a thin blade over the organ to coax it back to its former self. A virginal thing. Untouched.

It’s a tragedy when something is so worn out that cleansing it can no longer revive it. The tragedy being having to destroy it, in order for it to revive itself.

She presses her fingertips harder into the skin of her chest so they fill a dip between bone. _Bruise_ , she wills. So she can remember in the sunlight that it’s still all her fault.

“It’s not… healthy. I’ve had so many- I just want it to be better, with you,” Sarah says, as if Rachel said anything to protest. Her hands are still hiding her face. Nails digging in.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, because she can’t come up with anything else.

Sarah’s wording it like it’s not off the table. Like they could possibly figure it out, at some point, and this isn’t the world ending. It’s just the world burning for now.

“I’ve been here before, you know, thinking it’s fine it starts with so much pain, that you’ll get through it together and it’ll only get better.” Sarah finally removes her hands. Her eyes are red, glistening, pained to be saying any of this. “Love doesn’t mean you can’t destroy each other. Just means you can’t walk away until it’s too late.” Her voice breaks, and she clears her throat, reaching out of her sleeping bag, a hand falling flat between them like she wishes she could say she knows Rachel will be different.

However.

Rachel wishes she didn’t understand; that half of her wasn’t still hanging on to Sarah saying love, that she doesn’t want to tell her they wouldn’t be like that.

Maybe a good person could say it and it would be true.

“It’s fine,” Rachel says, shaking her head, pretending her voice isn’t a weak rasp and Sarah isn’t staring at her in anguish.

“No, god, I hate hearing you say that,” Sarah disputes. “It’s not _fine_. You’ve just… given up, you keep giving up, every time I…”

She cuts herself off in a way that suggests she’s incapable of saying it, that it’s on her they keep ending up at these impasses and Rachel always walks away like a wounded animal. Only they’re in a tent, now; they’re surrounded by trees that don’t know them; Rachel would have nowhere to run if she was still capable.

“Rachel,” Sarah starts again, shifting the sleeping bag that much closer, an emphasis on her name like this is the only part that matters. “I’m not saying no.”

Rachel considers wiggling her own sleeping bag backwards, needing the physical barrier of space because as close as Sarah is now Rachel can feel her warm breath and has no choice but to see the tiny, hopeful upturn of her lips in this dim lantern light.

“Then what _are_ you saying,” Rachel relents.

She’s almost at the tent wall, she tells herself, to justify staying where she is. There isn’t any room to back away. And she wants to, of course. She wants to deny Sarah whatever game she’s playing. Distantly, she remembers the cards scattered God knows where.

Sarah swallows. She’s so close.

“Remember the hike?” she asks. “We took a break at the picnic tables?”

“I do,” Rachel replies warily. Sarah had stared at her like she wanted to devour her. It was amusing, back then. Simple.

Sarah asks, “And your cigarettes?”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “You took them.”

“And when you read me those lines?” Sarah says, and Rachel finally gets it.

“I’d been worried you wouldn’t make it back all right,” Rachel recalls, as the corners of Sarah’s lips pull into a tiny smile.

“Because it started before Beth. It started before the pain. If we can get back to that-”

“Then it can work,” Rachel finishes for her.

Her mouth mirrors Sarah’s, the two of them hopeful. Awed.  

Sarah’s eyes are bright, as if they’ve unlocked the secret to everything. This was the piece that had been missing –  the ability to return to before Beth fused them together with grief and pain and scars that will always ache when the weather gets bad. They can resurrect it, if they heal the wound.

It’s all so suddenly clear that Rachel’s sure she must be dreaming.

“We’ll have to take it slow,” Sarah says, reluctantly, like she’s afraid Rachel gets it but isn’t willing to put in the work.

 _If I can make it through a single one of my father’s events…_ Rachel wants to give her, as proof, but holds her tongue. Because the way Sarah’s looking at her has her truly not wanting to think of her father at all.

“I know,” Rachel says.

In this moment they’re both soft. Open. Rachel feels like she could offer Sarah any one of her ribs to take in her bare hands and her chest wouldn’t protest a bit. Feel me, it would say. You’re the first. You’re the one who gets to see inside.

And then there’s Sarah with her own heart held open to pulse for the both of them, unafraid of what might come next.

For a second Rachel grows overwhelmed by the thought of it and has to shut her eyes until it passes. When she opens them again, lit only by the lantern, Sarah has made her way even closer. Half of her is in shadow. The other half painted a dull dark yellow that in sunlight would be gold.

“So, ask me again,” Sarah whispers, searching Rachel’s eyes for a sign that she follows.

She does. “Kiss me,” she says, and Sarah doesn’t hesitate.

Rachel never thought she’d feel a kiss that didn’t hurt in some way, whether through forcing herself to uphold expectations or the heavy shawl of grief that smothered any moment Sarah got close to her.

But here she is, head slightly raised from the pillow, meeting Sarah’s lips with a need that is both matched and enveloped in assurance. _It’s okay_ , Sarah’s saying. It feels like someone poured sunlight into Rachel’s veins: a warmth that burns, tingles, all the way down to her toes. Sarah runs her fingers through Rachel’s hair. Rachel whimpers, and the shame she expects at making that sound dissolves with the sensation of Sarah smiling against her.

They finally part and Sarah still can’t bear to separate, pressing a tiny kiss to the tip of Rachel’s nose.

“This is slow, right?” Rachel asks, a little breathless.

She isn’t prepared for the smile that breaks across Sarah’s face and clutches a fistful of fabric to steady herself.

“Of course, we’re still in our sleeping bags,” Sarah says cheekily. “Just, shove over so I can share your pillow.”

It’d be sweeter if Rachel didn’t remember the flat disappointment that is Sarah’s own pillow, but she moves over nonetheless, secretly thrilled with the monstrosity of hair that threatens to suffocate her. Sarah’s sharing her pillow. Sarah’s body is warm through the barrier of two sleeping bags. Rachel can move close enough to press her cheek to Sarah’s, and she does.

“It’s probably like, four already,” Sarah murmurs, though Rachel can tell she’s still smiling with the tone of her voice. “You know Krystal’s gonna plan some elaborate shite for the morning, just to punish us.”

Rachel shuts her eyes, even though the lantern’s still on. Neither of them will be moving to turn it off. In all actuality, it’s likely to die before they need to address it anyway.

“So we suffer together,” Rachel replies, entirely unbothered. She’s never felt so calm before. So serene. She could fall asleep in a second if she wasn’t determined to memorize every single moment of Sarah lying next to her.

Sarah lets out a breathy little laugh. “Yeah. Finally.”

 

* * *

 

It’s the kids that wake them up in the morning, trying to hush each other’s laughter and shrieks early enough that the sun hasn’t yet had a chance to warm the earth. Sarah’s cold on the parts of her body that aren’t touching Rachel – and, despite them both being in separate sleeping bags, that’s only half her face and the top of the arm she’s somehow draped over Rachel’s sleeping bag.

There’s a wave of embarrassment at accidentally mounting Rachel while they were both asleep, but then she remembers the way Rachel shivered underneath her as they kissed in the night and the embarrassment gives way to awe. It zaps through her: little filaments of incredulous joy, curling her toes. They _kissed_. They kissed _painlessly_.

It shouldn’t be such a marvel, but with the two of them as who they are and the barbed talons of this summer Sarah really didn’t think it would ever happen.

She wonders what Rachel thinks of it all right as she feels Rachel’s breathing change, as if the last grip she had on sleep finally gave out. Neither of them speak; Rachel stills like she’s trying to determine if Sarah’s also awake, and Sarah trails her fingers along Rachel’s sleeping bag, prompting Rachel to inch herself closer.

Sarah’s heart flutters. Screw the rest of the day: this moment deserves to go on forever.

She can’t even see Rachel, just the lump of her body in the sleeping bag and a bit of her blonde hair that’s almost in Sarah’s eyes. But she can _feel_ her, all of her, existing in the spaces where Sarah’s body doesn’t. And she can smell her; the faint herbal remnants of shampoo, and that sweet feminine scent that’s just her.

Sarah kind of always thought it was lotion or something, a fancy skincare product, but this close after a night in a tent it seems to be her natural scent. (Sarah’s sure her own natural scent rivals an ashtray, so she’s even more impressed that Rachel didn’t roll away in the few hours of night they were asleep.)

“Maybe if we leave them alone they’ll go back to sleep,” Rachel mumbles, and Sarah realizes she’s talking about the screams of excitement from where the kids are.

They have the fire pit, Sarah remembers. Probably all performing ritual sacrifice or whatever teenage girls consider vital knowledge these days. They’re supervised, at least, so Sarah’s not concerned. Let them summon a demon. So long as they don’t need her.

“Think you’d need chloroform or something for that to happen,” Sarah replies, waiting for Rachel to process what she’s said while a smile threatens.

Sure enough- “Oh, you’re horrible!”

But Rachel laughs, and Sarah warms at the sound.

“I know, can’t believe I kissed you with this mouth,” Sarah teases, her chest airily light as she feels Rachel’s body remembering. It’s a subtle shift, but it’s enough to render them both momentarily quiet.

And then Rachel says, “I can’t believe it either.”

Sarah clears her throat, suddenly aware of the weight of the moment and how much light stifles the plastic tent air and that someone’s likely to come get them soon enough to start the morning activities. Imagine being found like this. Being… witnessed.

“You know, I really didn’t peg you as someone who’d own a sleeping bag,” Sarah says, it being the first thing that pops into her head. Idiot.

Rachel lets out a little chuckle, moving just enough that Sarah’s arm starts to come back to her. A little feeling comes back as well, in the places that were cold. She stretches her fingers to diffuse the static-like prickling.

“My father bought every item on the packing list,” Rachel says, amusement in her voice. “I can guarantee this sleeping bag will never be used again.”

She says it lightly, and yet it jabs a hole through Sarah’s chest.

“What about next year?” Sarah asks.

“Next year?”

Rachel shifts _again_ , her shoulder turning to Sarah’s side, and Sarah wishes she had a free hand to pinch the bridge of her nose as she tries to figure out if this is another one of Rachel’s tests.

“Uh, seems like something a counselor might need, I dunno,” Sarah says cautiously, lost in this whole conversation without being able to see Rachel’s face. At least there might be some micro-expression Sarah could latch onto, whether or not it meant what she thought.

“One would assume,” Rachel responds. It’s light again. Coy. “Unless I set this one on fire and made my father buy another, just to waste his time. But… I suppose it has a memory attached to it now, doesn’t it? So it might have some worth after all.”

The start of a headache throbs at Sarah’s temples.

“So you’re coming back?” she asks.

Rachel turns until she’s on her back, and Sarah’s arm now drapes over her stomach. Or, her stomach under the padding of sleeping bag and silky pyjama top. It’s enough for Sarah to see her neck; if she lifted her head she could see Rachel’s face, but it all of a sudden feels like too much effort. Or maybe her brain’s just stuck on seeing this much skin and the little sleep patterns fading from it. Lines she can’t stop from wanting to trace.  

“I’m considering it,” Rachel says. Her arm moves in the sleeping bag, awkwardly, and then something presses into Sarah’s hand from the inside and Rachel’s intentions are clear. They’re holding hands. “I mean, it can’t be a worse summer than this one, right? So why not. Perhaps I’ll even get you in the lake.”

“Over my dead body,” Sarah says, but she’s beaming.

The two of them together, for a full summer, no grief to wade through… She can’t even wrap her mind around it.

A shriek without the accompanying laughter interrupts them and they sigh in unison, realizing they might actually have to go do their jobs. At the very least stumble down the path to ensure no one’s on fire.  

“Well it was nice well it lasted,” Rachel mutters, though she doesn’t budge.

Sarah realizes a second later it’s because she’s sort of pinning her down, the way they’re tangled, and struggles in her sleeping bag for a full two minutes before managing to sit up and give Rachel the space to do the same. Every inch of her is cold; she can’t look at sleeping bags and not think of cocoons, so the chill feels like a little chrysalis ripped from the branch too soon. No butterfly, just goo.

The lantern is still in the sad corner of the tent, dead, on its side over a spread of flung playing cards. Sarah spots her own. Winces.

“I’d do anything to brush my teeth right now,” Rachel says, making the sounds of someone becoming conscious of the awful taste in her mouth.

Sarah fluffs up her dirty tangle of hair and shoves it to the other side of her head, letting volume resettle it into something less disturbing. She’d also kill to brush her teeth. And she’s _sore_ – god, the ground is an unforgiving surface. She never thought she’d miss the lumpy, lifeless mattress of her cabin bed, but there are three separate parts of her back that are currently cursing her out.

With a groan, she rubs at the lowest one, situated just above the waistband of her pyjama pants. It had to be a rock that did it. She’s sure of it, with the bite of the bruise.

“Next time, Krystal and Shay get the tent,” she grumbles, turning to share her sour expression with Rachel.

Rachel has her head bent, rubbing at her eyes, an action that has Sarah thinking it’s a good thing Rachel took off her makeup last night and then remembering the hideous glitter that’s likely all over her own face.

“I’m so _tired_ ,” Rachel whines, and it’s soft in a way Sarah never gets to see.

Her body wiggles in delight before she can stop it.

But then Rachel’s head lifts, and for a split second Sarah’s just confused – baffled by the glisten of something dark and liquid trailing to Rachel’s mouth, equating the moisture with teeth-brushing before she realizes how ridiculous that is.

“Oh, you’re- you’re bleeding!” she says, distressed by Rachel’s own confusion and lack of movement – the blood has reached her top lip, now – and unable to do anything but throw herself towards her and nearly whip off her shirt in an effort to stem the flow of blood with fabric.

What they end up with is the bottom of Sarah’s shirt pressed into Rachel’s nose, and Rachel’s hands, inexplicably, attempting to cover the mortifying amount of skin Sarah’s revealed to the tent in the process.

For once, she’s glad she slept in a bra.

“Oh my god,” Rachel says, quite nasally, as she takes in the location of her hands. They’re warm, at least. All splayed out, doing a pretty good job of replacing Sarah’s shirt.

Another shirt now soaking up blood that- really has no reason to be rushing out like this. Sarah tries to recall the one day of First-Aid they sort of did at orientation – nosebleeds were like, mostly an instant _send to the nurse_ situation, but there was definite head tilting involved. She’s fairly sure.

“Tilt your head, uh, down,” she says, to Rachel’s shut eyes, though, if it’s from embarrassment, Rachel still hasn’t removed her hands, so. Sarah isn’t sure which party should be the shamed one here; it’s her bra Rachel’s fingertips are grazing, and her ratty shirt smothering half of Rachel’s face.

Rachel mutters something unidentifiable, confirming the smother. Sarah moves the bottom of the soggy shirt off of Rachel’s mouth (she brushes her lips, accidentally, and _really_ can’t think about that right now). Rachel tries again.

“There are tissues in my bag,” she utters. “This is… not ideal.”

She finally removes her hands, though, stabilizing herself on Sarah’s thighs, as Sarah pretends her cheeks aren’t burning and attempts to navigate Rachel’s bag without shifting her one hand away from the nosebleed. There are several items she decides not to identify in the bag – and then the familiar plastic shape of deodorant, and the crinkle of a tissue pack. Sarah pulls it out triumphantly.

One of Rachel’s hands appears from under the tent of Sarah’s stretched shirt, closing around the tissues and, momentarily, Sarah’s hand as well. Then her other hand guides the shirt away from her face.

“Thank-you, Sarah, but I can take it from here,” she says as she presses her forearm to her nose while freeing a tissue from the pack.

With the tissue in place, she tilts her head down like Sarah said. Then it’s just the two of them staring at the blood-drenched bottom of Sarah’s dark shirt. Funny, how the red still shows up. This time it isn’t in the rags of cloth she made for Beth, but it hangs heavy just the same. Her hands are just as stained. Rachel puts her fingertips over Sarah’s fingertips and they both take in the rusted color of blood giving every crack and line a purpose. _See me_.

“You know Beth asked Paul to do the fortune thing with him?” Sarah doesn’t know why she says.

Really, she sees the lines and thinks palm-reading, and sees the blood and thinks Beth, and she still isn’t over the way Paul told her that Beth asked. It was love; it was this shell of love she didn’t want to know.

“Did you see me save Alison’s life when the tent collapsed?” Rachel counters, muffled by her tissue, but easy enough for Sarah to get that this is Rachel’s way of keeping them from falling into that hole again. With the blood on their hands it’d be too easy. Sarah’s overwhelmingly grateful.

“You were amazing,” she says.

Rachel shirks her shifty medical instructions for a minute to raise her head, showering Sarah with the warmth of her smile. “I have my moments.”

Sarah blushes and has to look away, because the fluttering in her stomach is too much to bear with that slight quirk of Rachel’s eyebrow still fixed on her.

Down the path a battle cry pierces through the general screams of both teens and kids, and Sarah and Rachel concede without acknowledgement that they really need to stick an adult head into that business before it results in weaponry. Rachel grabs her makeup wipes from the small pile beside her sleeping bag and presents the package to Sarah, _for your hands_ , replacing her bloody tissue with a fresh one. She smiles. Sarah smiles.

Wordlessly, Sarah cleans the blood from her hands in the chilled morning light as Rachel rides out the end of her nosebleed, and it’s the happiest either of them have been in a long time.

 

* * *

 

The senior girls transition effortlessly into breakfast before Shay or Krystal can make an appearance at the campsite, leaving Sarah and Rachel to sit on a dew-covered log while the morning’s proceedings take place around them.

Two of the older girls have enlisted Madeleine and Afsheen in making tea over the campfire (which Sarah ignores for her sanity) while the rest of the group divides between unpacking crates of fruit and muffins and setting up a breakfast bar over two picnic tables. It’s organized chaos – Rachel muffles a snort as a stack of napkins takes off into the trees, bending as Sarah’s elbow digs into her – but for once it isn’t theirs to direct. The break is appreciated.

“Oh, nectarines,” Rachel says a minute later, the first thing after a stretch of comfortable morning silence.

She’s looking towards the picnic tables. Sarah looks too, just long enough to confirm the presence of nectarines, and then her gaze is back on Rachel’s softly smiling face. In the watery rays of light she looks like a dream image of herself – and Sarah still isn’t sure she isn’t, with the proximity of their hands on the log and the way Rachel’s smile keeps directing itself back to Sarah.

Sarah grins, sheepishly, and runs a hand over her face with a little laugh. “God,” she says. Not at all about the nectarines.

Rachel lets out the same laugh; it’s cuter on her and Sarah nearly groans when that thought sparks yet _another_ cheesy grin. If they’re trying to keep this under wraps-

She realizes she doesn’t know, all of a sudden, if this is something they want kept secret. She can’t imagine Rachel willingly sharing any of her business, with counselors or kids, especially not something so… personal, and at the idea of being Rachel’s personal business Sarah’s chest flutters.

So much of this summer has been consumed by secrecy and coded messages. And she can’t equate this to Beth, but she also can’t have it be Paul, either, who’s only just emerged from the stain of last year’s very public mistake. She never thought she’d be able to sit with him in the mess hall without everyone’s eyes pinning them to their seats – it was humiliating, and well-deserved, and regardless of the differences she would hate to pull Rachel into that spotlight.

Sarah’s lived most of her life under observation: social workers, school authorities, the scrutiny of her peers. Every fuck-up has been theirs to devour. Every piece of joy they’d monitor to corruption. The only way to keep something good for herself was to deny its existence, and she knows why that need is there, but the idea of keeping Rachel in the same dark cellar she’s kept the rest of her measly scraps has her feeling ill.

 _You exist_ , she projects at the side of Rachel’s face. Someone gave the kids knives and Rachel’s rightfully concerned, but all Sarah can do is worry the inside of her lip.

They haven’t spoken about it, really. They woke up together and Rachel had her nosebleed and then they were here, hands clean, sitting in the open for everyone to see. (No one’s looking, but Sarah still feels it.) Anything that should have been discussed was lost to the blood and the energy it took to even get to this point, and Sarah’s still shocked they managed, still waiting to wake up to Rachel’s cruel silence.

She glances again at Rachel’s hand. The campfire’s only about five feet away, but with the kettle threatening to boil and the girls around it so focused on the flames Sarah’s sure that she and Rachel on their little log go completely unnoticed. Everyone’s busy with something. Sarah looks around to confirm, and her action catches Rachel’s attention.

“What?” Rachel asks, amused.

She isn’t wearing any makeup this morning – not even eyebrow pencil. It most likely makes her look younger but all Sarah can see is the honesty to it, and it takes her breath away.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. And then, “Just-”

 _We should probably talk_ , is what she’s going to say, but it dies on her tongue the second Rachel’s gaze shifts to something over Sarah’s shoulder and Rachel immediately stiffens.

“Well aren’t you two up early. Rough night?”

Rachel’s features go frosty for a second before slipping into something composed and closed off. The hand near Sarah’s doesn’t move, though, and Sarah hates the twitch of her own fingers as Krystal and Shay take a seat on the log beside them.

Shay looks about as awful as Sarah should feel given how little sleep she got, all wrapped up in a patch-covered blanket, leaning into Krystal as her question hangs a little too long. Her eyebrow goes up. Sarah’s hand has pins and needles.

“Uh, ‘bout as well as can be expected in a bloody tent,” Sarah finally answers, and Shay’s expression turns sheepish.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she says, as Krystal snorts out a laugh.

“Your lantern’s dead, by the way,” Rachel interjects nonchalantly, examining the nails on her free hand as if they aren’t chipped to hell, and Sarah has to hold back her own awful laugh.

“Oh,” Shay says, as Krystal replies, “Like, don’t even worry. I just can’t believe you stayed there the whole effing night!”

Sarah’s torn between tossing back _yeah, while you two got actual mattresses_ and _as if there was anywhere else to go_ and ends up just grunting something close enough to a response that Krystal’s features soften. It isn’t quite pity, but everything with Krystal seems to rotate back around to that general idea, as if she’s unable to imagine any life that isn’t her own being worth the effort. Sarah tells herself she finds it endearing.

She catches the tail end of Rachel’s reaction to this before it fades back to neutral, not expecting the sudden shift of Rachel’s hand so their fingers touch. A brief, defiant gesture. And then both hands smooth down the front of her shirt.

“So what’s the plan for today, before we’re released?” Rachel asks, eyes on the girls at the fire.

The boiled water is being divvied up between cups, teabags dropped in haphazardly. Madeleine has a long stick in hand and continues to poke at the fire’s embers, sure of herself in a way Sarah will never get tired of seeing.

“As long as you slept, you should be fine,” Shay cuts in before Krystal can answer, in a tone that suggests she most certainly will not be fine herself.

“Why,” Sarah inquires. Her eyes narrow suspiciously.

Shay pulls the edge of her blanket up over the bottom half of her face, sealing the action with a shrug that has Krystal turning to her and then back around with feigned innocence.

“The kids planned it,” she says, giving the exact same shrug as Shay. “Just- like, caffeinate. You like horses, right?”

It’s unclear who she’s asking but Sarah _sees_ her own disdain in Rachel’s face and it’s enough of a response for Krystal to squeak out an apology. It’s only the first thing, she says, as if that makes it any better. Rachel takes Sarah’s wrist with tight fingers and pulls them both off the log, entirely too dramatic but also a perfect reaction to Shay’s muffled snicker.

“We’re getting nectarines,” Rachel tells the space on the log they leave behind. She doesn’t release Sarah’s wrist and her brisk pace refuses to give.

“I’m _sooorry_ ,” Krystal croons after them, but she’s giggling just as much as Shay as Sarah melts into the sensation of being led by Rachel, skin warm in her grasp.

For once, they’re on the same team. And more than that, the team consists solely of the two of them, which is a luxury Sarah never thought she’d be granted.

Rachel hands her the plumpest-looking nectarine at the breakfast table; she takes the second nicest for herself, and on Sarah’s look she lets a smile slip out as her cheeks flush. “Oh, don’t start,” she chastises as her chin dips, and Sarah can only shake her head in response, mirroring Rachel’s little smile.

Sarah wouldn’t even know where to begin. And it’s wonderful.

 

* * *

 

As if they’d planned for optimal torture, factoring in the sun’s renewed mid-morning interest in burning, horseback riding leads right into a hike up a trail that knows no mercy. The older girls each find themselves a younger buddy, tackling their trek with an energy Sarah truly doesn’t remember ever possessing, as she and the other counselors bring up the rear, managing to only catch wisps of the conversations up ahead.

One of the girls knows Julisa’s brother. Quinn and a girl with a lip ring both hate their parents. There’s a general agreement that the horses were fun, but tiring.

Sarah agrees on the last point. Her thighs haven’t burned like this since- well. She won’t think about Paul when Rachel’s right beside her, hands in her pockets like that’s the only place they want to be.

It’s a quiet hike at the back of the group, at least; Krystal has her phone out, texting several people at once, the rhinestones on her phone case not going without a solid side-eye from Rachel. Shay, now dressed in a long black crocheted vest that does its best to hide the tie-dye underneath, trudges along behind Krystal with a thermos of tea. Every so often Krystal slows to a stop and Shay bumps into her, as if to remind her they have to keep going. (Every time Rachel bumps into Sarah it’s intentional for different reasons, and it always ends in Sarah smiling at something she hadn’t noticed.)

Rachel’s pace matches Sarah. They’re both silent, but with the glances between them Sarah never feels like they aren’t talking.

(Look, Rachel says with her eyes, and Sarah looks to see a piggyback that results in a branch to the face.)

The woods here aren’t any different from the woods at the junior camp – Sarah’s spent enough time in trees this summer to be so _over_ them, and they keep walking through more, the same ugly trunks, the same canopy of green, as if on a treadmill. It’s almost as irritating as Rachel’s hand permanently glued to the inside of her pocket or how they’re finally in the world outside of their little tent and it’s a harsh wakeup call to reality.

They’re choosing to keep it a secret. All Sarah wants to do is walk through the woods holding her gi- holding Rachel’s hand, but they’re surrounded by people. Witnesses.

(As if Shay hasn’t already suspected; she pulled Sarah aside in the stables, earlier, just to comment on how happy she seemed. “It’s nice,” she said, when Sarah tried to protest. “Don’t worry. It’s nobody’s business.”)

It would be different if they weren’t two girls, Sarah thinks. Or they weren’t two girls who are who they are, with seven weeks of widely-known history between them. Or if either one of them had ever seemed blameless, had ever seemed benign, the way Delphine and Beth and Gracie and Art and Tony and everyone knows how to be without trying.

People who keep their messy parts inside. Or if their mess dares to spill out, it’s one that can be forgiven.

She adds Cosima to the list too. And Alison. And then even Paul, because he wasn’t the one they all hated for last summer. And then she thinks about it some more.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, grabbing her two seconds before she walks into a tree.

“Shit,” Sarah says, as Rachel’s hand falls away. “Thanks for the save.”

Rachel’s smile says _no problem_. It could say it to anyone.

Maybe Rachel’s on the list too.

Maybe it’s just Sarah who isn’t.

 _How do you do it_ , she wants to know. _How do you keep your secrets without them ruining you. How do you stop yourself from getting those secrets in the first place._

How does someone go through life without ruining everyone they touch, is what she really means, and that realization turns her stomach to a tar pit as it presents itself to her latest secret. She can see the two converging like colored beads at the end of a kaleidoscope, and then it’s turned and they’re something else now, a new shape entirely, with edges she knows she shouldn’t touch.

Rachel’s hand is back in her pocket. Shay bumps Krystal forward again, without a word.

In the woods everything is dark or green – it’s either bright or it isn’t, and all the dark is only there for the green to grow. They pass a large rock blanketed in moss. Prickly bushes that swell up from the soil. Sarah tries to find a metaphor as she swerves around yet another misplaced tree.

And then they’re in a clearing.

“All right,” one of the senior girls says.

It has its very own halo of light: everything is gold, her sister’s hair, like someone took a Midas comb to the earth and the rocks and the small pews carved out of logs.

“What is this place?” someone says.

Sarah takes it in as Rachel nearly presses against her side. They _are_ pews – a second look confirms it, and they line up nicely before a small wooden lectern. Everything bears the marks of having been here for a while, worn by years and weather, accepting the careful way nature tries to take it back. Little flowers in the cracks of the logs. Mushrooms at the base. Sarah lets out her breath.

“They used to use it for like, occasional Sunday school-type things, before this place became, you know, non-denominational,” a senior girl replies, stepping aside as Aara moves in with her clipboard.

“Now it’s just one of the many hidden treasures of the senior camp,” Aara continues, smiling like this is a campus tour. Alison would _love_ her. “And what better place to wrap up our torch-passing? Last night we touched a little on what it means to be a role model, but today we wanted to share stories of some of _our_ role models, and invite you to talk about your own. And when you’re in the position to shape the world of someone who looks up to you, we hope you’ll remember what’s said today. Because it’s a privilege, but it’s also terrifying, sometimes.”

For whatever reason, Aara looks to the edge of the group, where the counselors stand. Sarah inadvertently steps back and then shares a sheepish look with Shay as she does the same.

“So just remember how much of it is the little things, as you’ll hear in a minute,” Aara goes on, then invites the campers to have a seat in the pews.

Several senior girls pull out actual pieces of paper from pockets or bags, giving Sarah a prickly school feeling that she can’t shake despite being in the middle of a forest in the sole patch of sunlight for at least a mile. There are just enough spots on the pews for the junior campers, and the ones that seem slotted to speak first take a seat on the ground near the lectern, leaving the rest to either coerce a junior camper to sit on their lap or find a spot on the grass that, with access to the sun, has grown soft and wild.

Sarah takes a seat in the grass as well, albeit still at the edge of the forest far enough away to consider herself a spectator. With the look Aara keeps giving her crowd Sarah wouldn’t be surprised to find herself called up as a volunteer if she was any closer and the awful flipping of her stomach would _not_ appreciate being forced into public speaking on summer break.

After a second Shay and Rachel join her, one on either side, clearly recognizing the risk of moving in. Krystal finds a perch on a nearby rock; she still has her phone out, but it doesn’t garner any attention from her kids. Sarah’s fairly certain it’s been like this all summer.

“I’m sorry if this is unbearably cheesy,” Shay half whispers, leaning over Sarah’s lap so she can speak to both her and Rachel.

Sarah tries not to pay attention to the pressure of Shay’s hand on her thigh, but all that does is direct her focus to the possibility of Rachel paying attention, and then her cheeks are warm in an uncomfortable way remembering the walk to the campsite last night and Shay beside her.

“It seems like it’s from the heart,” Rachel says, to Shay’s apology, her expression revealing nothing under the polite smile.

Shay’s still leaning over and Sarah tries to sit up a little straighter just to get some space. The corner of Rachel’s lip tugs, almost invisible. She’s _enjoying_ this, the bugger.

“The director had this big speech, you know, being a role model, really stepping up for the little kids this year, after, like, everything, and I guess it was pretty effective,” Shay explains, and Rachel gives her an empathetic _mhm_ while sneaking Sarah the most amused glance.

One of the senior girls has started her story, elbows on the lectern and holding the attention of every girl in the pews. Sarah very carefully eases herself back onto her hands, leaning away from Shay who doesn’t seem to realize she’s capable of sitting up, and Rachel somehow makes a little noise that begs for Shay to _please, continue. This is so fascinating._

Shay’s free hand does a little Cosima-twist. “I think some of Krystal’s girls were practicing, weren’t they Krystal?”

“They totally were,” Krystal says, monotone, not looking up from her phone.

“How cute,” Rachel reacts in a horrifyingly sweet way.

Sarah exhales forcefully through her nose. Shay goes on, describing how a few of the girls ran their ideas by her, isn’t that adorable that they wanted her opinion, she must actually be a role model for some of them but she isn’t totally surprised, with what they’ve said to her before, you know some of them came back just because they knew they’d have her. All the while Rachel shifts microscopically – and then her hand has found Sarah’s, behind them, covering it with her palm as her fingers curl underneath.

Sarah’s head turns to catch Rachel’s expression but her eyes are fixed, rapt, on Shay.

“You must feel quite proud,” Rachel says.

Shay does a little wiggle of feigned-humility and then puts a hand on Sarah’s arm, saying, “well, we all want to do our best for these girls, right? That’s what it’s all about.”

All Sarah can feel is the warmth of Rachel’s hand around hers and the coolness of the grass underneath it, letting the dichotomy wash through her in gentle, pleasant waves. Shay could crawl into her lap right now and it wouldn’t make a difference.

“That’s very true,” Rachel agrees. “And, fortunately, they prefer to see the best in us.”

It’s almost imperceptibly softer; Sarah catches it only because she’s hyperaware of Rachel’s whole body, where their knees brush and the movement of her thumb over Sarah’s wrist. Rachel drops her act for a millisecond – just enough to let Sarah know she means it. That this one line is for her.

Shay sits back in contemplation of this, nodding as Sarah regains her space and the feeling in one part of her leg. “They do,” Shay says, pulling her knees up to her chest. She hugs them, resting her chin, looking towards the lectern. “Even at- like, fourteen, fifteen. You wouldn’t expect it, but they really do. It’s kind of amazing.”

Rachel’s hand tightens around Sarah’s, scooping it up from the grass so she’s the only thing holding it now. It’s all warmth. Sarah lets it flow through her body and it’s warmer than the sun.

What Rachel says next has no trace of insincerity and Sarah’s momentarily surprised that she’d share it so openly. But, she realizes, it isn’t meant for anyone who might be listening. It’s solely for the hand she’s holding.

“It made me better,” Rachel says as soft as the breeze that comes through the forest. “This summer. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I’m grateful.”

She breaks her deliberate gaze towards the girls in the pews to make eye contact with Sarah, undeterred by their lack of solitude. And she smiles. A genuine, heartfelt smile.

 

* * *

 

Later, after dinner, back at the junior camp, Sarah washes her hair.

When she gets out of the shower Quinn’s at a sink scrubbing her hands, and she gives Sarah a strange look through the mirror. “It’s just movie night,” she says, brow in a slight frown. “What’d they say, Beethoven?”

“Think so, yeah,” Sarah says, and adjusts the towel on her head, slipping out of the bathroom before she can arouse any more suspicion.

Still, her kids take notice when she herds them onto the porch to head to the rec hall, because it’s the first time in at least a week her hair’s been this clean and much longer since she last bothered with mascara. She’s in a stained pair of shorts, she feels like defending, but no one says anything. They just sneak glances until everyone’s out of the cabin and on the walk through the forest they’re too far ahead for her to hear their conversations.

“Well, don’t you look nice,” Rachel comments as soon as her own kids are out of earshot, all still gushing about their sleepover and practically skipping as they regale each other with shared tales.

Sarah’s hair hasn’t fully dried, but it doesn’t stop Rachel tentatively reaching out, running a finger through one of the errant curls. It lingers by the edge of her jaw and Rachel watches it, watches her finger drift all the way down until it’s back at her own side.

Sarah buries her bashful smile against her shoulder, skin tingling.

“Thought I might remind the masses I can look relatively human, when I’m not stuck in the wilderness,” she replies, lips pulling wider at Rachel’s smile.

The path narrows then, just a bit, and Rachel uses this as an excuse to walk closer. If either one reached out, they could hold hands. Right here in the open, where anyone could see. It’s exhilarating. Sarah has to remind herself to keep her eyes on the path ahead so she doesn’t stumble. (Or melt, or implode, or reach out, or…)

“The masses appreciate it,” Rachel says, quite composed, then clears her throat to try and keep it that way.

She’s done her eyebrows – Sarah doesn’t know how it took this long to notice. But the rest of her is natural; a stowaway pine needle in her hair, even, likely from the hike, a mosquito bite on her neck where Sarah’s lips have been. She looks more or less the same as she did at dinner, when they sat with two kids between them because they still haven’t had the conversation that needs to come next. And yet, in the cooler evening light, she takes Sarah’s breath away.

(Just being able to admit that to herself is… unbelievable. Every one of these Rachel thoughts ricochets back like it has to double check, and Sarah still doesn’t know how much can be said out loud, but she lets them expand in her mind nonetheless. After all they’ve endured, it feels warranted.)

“Can the masses slip out of the movie tonight?” Sarah says, stomach flipping at the slight lift of Rachel’s eyebrow.

“I’m not sure, they _were_ looking forward to another dog movie, but…” Rachel shrugs and casually drifts into Sarah’s side, a little nudge and a smile, and Sarah hates that she finds herself looking up ahead to see if any of the kids have turned back.

They haven’t. They’re little dots in the distance, but even with the paling sky and the trees Sarah feels watched.

“We… I want to talk,” Sarah more or less croaks out, still staring at the kids as they near the rec hall.

It’s enough to make Rachel stop. “Whoa,” she says, a full step behind Sarah in a mild cloud of dust. “When did-”

“No, just-” Sarah inhales sharply and everything in her _stings_ , a new kind of wound in her chest she didn’t know could feel this way. At Rachel’s face, at her slowly deflating composure. “To figure it out, what we’re…”

“I thought we did,” Rachel says, and she still hasn’t started walking again.

Sarah’s arms fold over her stomach. “And yet we’re shoving kids between us in the mess hall so no one will suspect anything.”

She doesn’t realize she’s angry until it comes out, sparking the sharp kind of frown on Rachel that always tastes like acid, and then the shell of anger folds away and it’s just that wound. She’s upset. And a part of her has enough trust to let that show.  

“Oh,” Rachel responds, sounding tired. “That.”

“That _what_?”

Rachel’s walking again and she passes Sarah, and Sarah jogs a few steps to catch up before they’re at the rec hall themselves. It’s busy; a warm Saturday evening, everyone milling around outside before they’re forced to head in. Sarah sees three faces she doesn’t want to think about. And Rachel’s shoulders are tense.

She says Rachel’s name with the exasperation of someone who deserves a reaction and for once Rachel gives it to her – she whirls around, stopping both of them again now at a drooping pine tree.

“That’s what I want to talk about,” Sarah says. Her voice is smaller than she usually lets anyone hear it. But this isn’t anyone; it’s Rachel, and Rachel shoves her pinky nail into her mouth to buy time. “Wait ‘til they’re all settled in. Then slip out for some privacy.”

Rachel runs the edge of her nail along her lip, but the worry creases between her eyebrows lessen.

Sarah adds, “I can assure you, you don’t want to watch Beethoven.”

Rachel rolls her eyes with the tiniest smile, and she speaks more to the low-hanging branch beside her than anything, but she does respond. “What if I told you I’ve already seen it.” It’s wry, and Sarah laughs.

“You’re a pain in my arse, you know,” Sarah says, this time the one to nudge them along.

Rachel complies and doesn’t even flinch when someone in the clearing says Sarah’s name.

“That’s the goal,” Rachel utters before speeding ahead, under the guise of catching up with her kids, but it’s another cheeky jab and it herds everyone towards the front door in a move that no one else could make look so effortless.

The unbearable smile it puts on Sarah’s face lasts the whole twenty minutes before they manage to sneak out – she’s sure the movie plot isn’t enough to smile at itself, but she’s at the back and no one notices and only Tony’s head turns as she’s making her way to the door. But he’s ducked out with her too many times before to care, and he returns her smile with a knowing wink.

Rachel appears round the side of the building a minute later, eyes wide and searching until they land on Sarah sitting on an overturned bucket. She’s pretty sure it’s the same one they used for fishing, but it’s here to catch some rain gutter overflow now, and a spider’s crafted an elaborate home inside.

“Glad you made it,” Sarah says, standing as Rachel approaches in some weird attempt at chivalry.

Rachel stares at the bucket for a second, as if trying to place it. Then she lifts her shoulders with a breath that signals she’s ready to get this over with.

“Here?” Sarah asks. “Or do you want to walk?”

A noncommittal headshake turns into Rachel gesturing to the mouth of a nearby path, which is one that leads to Seth and Rudy’s cabin and the back of the tennis courts but seems to work just fine as Rachel starts them walking.

Sarah catches up and immediately brushes a mosquito off her arm, wondering a second later why she didn’t kill it as it flies into the bushes. Pity? Or maybe she needs a witness. The thin evening light between the trees isn’t enough to say it’s with them, here, in this conversation Sarah doesn’t know how to start.

“This is your party,” Rachel mutters after Sarah’s uncomfortable _so_.

God, do they need a mediator. Sarah eyes the bush behind them like the mosquito might come back.

“Do you… _want_ people to know?” she blurts out, when it’s clear there isn’t any other way to begin.

Rachel stifles a hand gesture that looks eerily like Cosima’s, that mix of confusion and annoyance, at the giant lack of words to say in response. They don’t stop walking if only for the bugs – Sarah can spy a cabin up ahead, someone’s boxers draped over a corner of the roof like a forgotten flag on a battlefield. But Rachel’s posture is ballerina-straight as they trudge onward.

“Or you don’t want people to know,” Sarah fills in when Rachel doesn’t offer up anything else. Rachel sighs. “It’s fine, you know, whichever’s good for you, it’s not like we’ll be here much longer anyway. And then-”

Sarah stops because she realizes she doesn’t know.

She stops walking, too. A cloud of gnats or something equally irritating swarms her damp hair.

“Exactly,” Rachel says in a carefully quiet voice.

Sarah observes Rachel’s scarily-straight back. “Oh,” she grasps, the word coming out tender enough for Rachel to face her.

She’s glassy-eyed and tries to hide it with a hand to her forehead, brushing away a slipping piece of blonde hair, but Sarah merely closes the gap between them and pulls Rachel into a hug that’s only resisted for a second. Then Rachel sinks into her, with the full weight of everything that still needs to be said.

“Hey,” Sarah says, pulling back to catch Rachel’s eye. “Just talk to me.”

Rachel breathes out a tiny chuckle. “You know that’s not my forte.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, but she smiles in response. It isn’t either of theirs. If it was, they’d be Cosima and Delphine and wouldn’t have wasted an entire summer finding new places for the same shared knife.

“It’s not like we’ll go home and never see each other again, right?” Sarah says as they separate just enough to keep walking, but Rachel doesn’t let her hand get away.

It doesn’t matter, here in the forest. Sarah wants to tell the trees it never did. That everything they let become a secret in the dark never needed to hurt that much. But she’s sorry for it. She’s sorry for trying to hide and for running every time they were both still long enough to maybe look it in the eye. Like now.

But Rachel keeps the pace steady, and her fingers thread through Sarah’s like a lock.

“We have different lives, you know,” Rachel says, a little less resigned than Sarah supposes it could’ve come out. “Your family…”

“I’d tell them,” Sarah immediately responds. And she’s sure of it.

Rachel’s glance is a Beth-kind of emotion. “Really?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Sarah says, her cheeks sore with a dumb smile. “They won’t care. For one, you have more manners than all my exes combined, so S’ll adore you off the bat.”

Rachel giggles and the soft sound of it tumbles delightfully in Sarah’s chest.

“You have friends, too,” she says a second later, as her grip tightens on Sarah’s hand.

“Here,” Sarah corrects, and Rachel says, “Yeah.”

Someone’s painted a target on the back of the boys’ cabin – they’ve walked the long way around it, and from this angle Sarah can see it through the skinny trees that line the path. It’s all primary colors. Chipped. Maybe it was here even before Seth and Rudy; she can’t say she’s spent much time lingering in this part of the woods.

Rachel watches it with her, the two of them silent for a moment in the presence of a reminder that more goes on here than anyone could fully know.

“I want them to know,” Sarah says. They keep walking, with one last glance at the target. “If you’re okay. I don’t want to keep any more secrets.”

“But that’s-” Whatever Rachel starts to say dissolves in a shake of her head, as she redirects herself to something else. “You’re not ashamed, then?”

Sarah’s head literally swivels around in disbelief. “Why would I-? Jesus, is that what you think?”

It must come out harsher than she intends because Rachel shifts away, a step, and mumbles a little, “well we never _talk_ ,” and the two of them blink at each other before laughing.

“My god, Rachel, you have to know it’s the complete opposite,” Sarah says as she leans into Rachel’s side, and she’s close enough to feel her smile.

“Good,” she says. She lets the pause grow long enough for Sarah to nudge her, feigning indignation, and then chuckles and adds, “me too. Just so you know.”

Sarah echoes her _good_ , relishing the tingly warmth it spreads through her body. One of these days she’s going to have to apologize to Cosima for thinking she was exaggerating in their many, many heart-to-hearts at the start of her relationship with Delphine. People really _can_ feel like an enjoyable pile of mush.

“Why don’t you come to the campfire with me tonight?” Sarah asks as they’re heading back, having nearly lost the light with the setting sun and the thick of trees.

They won’t have many left, which is why Tony asked if Sarah was planning on going during capture the flag earlier. The summer’s… ending. It’ll all be over soon, and Sarah realizes how desperate she is to cram as many good moments with Rachel as she can into this last week. How stupid it is to keep it a secret when that only means it keeps them apart.

“That’s… rather public,” Rachel responds, but even as they spot the rec hall up ahead she doesn’t let go of Sarah’s hand.

Sarah knows what she’s saying, anyway. _That will make it real. Are you sure this is what you want?_

“That’s the point,” Sarah says, caught between trying to play it cool and wanting to let her giant grin slip through as Rachel lets out that sweet little nose-exhale of hers. “You, me, enough bug spray to kill a man. No more secrets. If you want.”

Rachel stops at the edge of the forest, and for a second she has her eyes shut, bracing herself against Sarah’s hand. Then: “Okay. Not for too long, but-”

She’s cut off by Sarah’s awful squeal, and Sarah nearly takes them both down in what’s more a tackle than the hug she intended, but Rachel saves them with a steadying kiss.

“To keep us going through the remainder of Beethoven,” Rachel explains when they part. “Trust me.”

“God, you’ve really seen it,” Sarah says, following her to the wooden steps of the rec hall, and all Rachel gives in return is a pained nod as she holds the door for Sarah to enter first.

It’s like coming back down to earth, slipping into the dark, humid room, the smell of bug spray and sweat, but it’s fine. It’s only for a little while. Rachel sits beside Sarah on the end of a bench and Sarah isn’t worried at all about retaining anything from the movie. Not when her lips are still warm with the taste of Rachel’s chapstick. And Rachel’s hand finds a spot right under Sarah’s.

 

* * *

 

Once, another lifetime ago, Rachel wore an ironed white blouse and velveteen skirt, and stood in front of her middle school with a violin she knew she couldn’t play. It was a nightmare. (Something her father thought her mother would’ve loved.) She held the bow to the strings and cringed before it even made a sound. The only relief was that it eventually ended, and even that wasn’t soon enough.

Somehow, the campfire is worse.

She’s dressed similarly to her peers, at least – cuffed shorts and a long-sleeved shirt that’s more for the mosquitoes than the slight chill, and she has a blanket draped over her shoulder that Sarah placed there like a shield before they headed out.

( _We might need it_ , she’d shrugged. _Or… want it._ Rachel didn’t press any further.)

They can smell the smoke before the fire appears, a warning, Sarah’s hand tight around Rachel’s, and through the trees it looks like only shadows are sitting around the stretching flames. Everyone is a silhouette. Their featureless heads turn as Sarah approaches. And Rachel, at her side, swallows down what feels like vomit.

It’s Delphine who speaks first – Rachel expects castigation, a curse cast through the dark, caught off guard when it isn’t – and her tone is warm, making space on the log where she shares a bottle of wine with Cosima.

Briefly, Rachel considers that Sarah’s already spread the news. But then she sits and Sarah sits with her and the flash of disbelief in Cosima’s eyes tells her Sarah truly did keep her word. (It’s only now, of course, with what feels like twenty pairs of eyes pinned to her, that Rachel considers the benefits and consequences of choosing the campfire to – for lack of a better term – come out. Surely there was an easier way than throwing themselves at the wolves.)

“Didn’t think you’d show, all things considered,” Tony whoops from a log hidden by the flames, just a disembodied voice. It puts that catlike grin on Sarah’s face. She ducks her head and pulls Rachel’s arm closer, doing nothing to quash her smile.

“Came for that drink you promised,” Sarah tosses back. It’s softer than it should be, but no one says a word.

On Sarah’s other side Delphine casts a questioning look in Rachel’s direction, as if checking in with her. It’s comical to believe this is her true intention but Rachel appreciates it nonetheless, because a second later Sarah rises to accept a bottle from Tony’s hand, and he places one in Rachel’s that drips condensation between her thighs with cold surprise.

“You do drink beer, right? Or should I have gotten, uh, one of these fine merlots?” Tony asks, pretending to examine Delphine’s wine with a teasing smirk at Rachel.

Sarah freezes, halfway between standing and sitting as if she hadn’t before considered this. Her eyes go from the beer to Rachel’s lips and back again and Rachel pushes out a smile just to calm her.

“More of a vodka girl, but this will do,” she says as Sarah finally sits back down.

Tony’s grin is a seal of approval. “Well just wait until Krystal gets here, then. Sure she’s gonna love you.”

She can’t stop the chuckle that comes out with Sarah’s laugh, unable to forget how determined Krystal was the other night to make Rachel her newest friend. Her chuckle dies at the nails in her thigh, though, Sarah’s hand disguising claws, giving Tony that little smile to tell him to fuck off.

“Yeah, you never did tell us how your big campout went,” Cosima says, Tony obeying his command and returning to Paul, and despite the slight nudge from Delphine Cosima awaits an answer.

Sarah clears her throat. Rachel chances a sip of her beer, and it tastes less like rainwater than she expected. She’s not sure that’s a positive.

“Eventful?” Delphine supplies.

Sarah gives her a long, slow nod, breathing in through her teeth. Eventful.

Rachel sets the folded blanket down on the log at her side, a promise for the night to offer more than this uncomfortably stilted conversation, feeling like the spy in the room who’s forcing everyone to speak in code. She waits for a pattern tapped into the wood. A flashlight blinking on and off, just for the three of them to understand.

But then Sarah’s arm makes its careful way around Rachel’s waist; warm, secure in a way Rachel isn’t expecting. Through the smoke and the dark and the dust it’s all she can feel and she trembles at the welcome way the contact burns, a reply for the pair of them.

“Good,” Delphine says, eyes on the curl of Sarah’s fingers just over Rachel’s hipbone. “I’m happy for you. Both.”

It lands harder than likely intended, but Rachel still counts it as a win considering how clearly she can still recall Delphine’s threat from a few weeks before. These words aren’t laced with arsenic. They’re unsweetened, but Rachel can still swallow them.

“Yeah, it’s about time,” Cosima says after a second. She grins at Sarah and maintains enough of a smile to direct it at Rachel, who returns a similarly tight-lipped expression with good intentions.

In terms of unspoken social minefields, this one is easily navigable. It’s so far from high school or other exhausting cliques that Rachel’s actually surprised when Sarah stiffens and turns to face her friends with the disapproval of a nun. They’re taken aback too, in the firelight, and when all Rachel can see of Sarah is her wild, curling hair she catches the reactions of her expression in Delphine and Cosima.

“I know you have your opinions,” Sarah says right when it seems like she might not speak at all, “but those mean nothing to me now. Okay? Just- be cool, or- or fuck off. I don’t need to know. I’m… happy.”

She finishes with a resolute nod, not so much convincing herself as confirming that she really did say it. Rachel feels the churning waves in her stomach freeze – and it isn’t any less disconcerting, just them trying, the waves, to process, trying to recall any other moment where someone said half of that about Rachel in the past.

Rachel pushes the rim of the beer bottle against her bottom lip to ground herself as it becomes clear this is the first time. And that Cosima and Delphine are equally stunned.

Delphine finally breathes in a welcoming smile and promises, hand on Sarah’s leg, to be _cool_ , which spurs Cosima into action as well. Her response is more of a bobblehead-nodding but there is a smile in all the movement and her gaze eventually lands on Rachel who’s mostly doing her best to disappear from this log altogether.

It’s not that this is the most embarrassing moment, or degrading, but she’s defenseless. Sarah had her completely unguarded before they even came. Rachel couldn’t extend her claws if she wanted to.

“You’re happy,” Cosima echoes. “I’m glad. Really.”

She means it, and Rachel feels a pull in her chest that Sarah has people who care like this. Not envy, but… She yanks on it a little more to try and name it. It’s a small comfort, she decides. That Sarah has friends like them in her life. Because she _wants_ Sarah to have that. She wants Sarah to be loved.

“And Rachel?” Delphine asks, rousing Rachel from her thoughts.

There is a lingering image of Sarah with her arm against Cosima’s, the fire trapping both of them in a soft orange glow. Rachel tears her eyes away to see Delphine leaning back so she can see to Rachel’s end of the log. 

“Yes?” Rachel replies.

Delphine braces herself with a hand against the worn bark, to prevent herself from falling. “Are you happy as well?”

Rachel should thank her for managing to disguise almost all the bitterness from her voice. The soft core is true, at least – Rachel knows this. But: old habits. The love of an old friend. She dare not attempt to sever that.

Sarah turns to see Rachel’s response, a small smile on her lips like she already knows the answer. She does. Rachel wouldn’t say it for anyone else if it was the first time. But they’re at a campfire and every log has someone who might remember this, at a later date, pinning Rachel to her place at Sarah’s side, how they walked through the forest together and in the light they held the truth.

On her other side is a blanket and Rachel knows at some point she wants to find herself under it with Sarah. Not for any other purpose than to sit; hands touching, of course, the two of them evading the August chill. Maybe they’ll drink a little more than one beer. Maybe this will be it.

“I am,” Rachel responds, eyes on Sarah alone. “I’m happy.”

 

* * *

 

Sunday, during quiet hour, Rachel and Sarah sit at the same picnic table. It’s pleasantly warm and the girls around them are occupied with the tail end of friendship bracelets or this new obsession with nature sketches, thanks to yesterday’s offsite trip, trying to capture the spirit of the trees with broken crayons.

With the weight of the sun, the soft wisps of half conversations, Rachel finds herself remembering the day Sarah braided everyone’s hair and smiles before she recalls all that followed. Only, it doesn’t come with the pang of shame she would expect – just a dull ache. A bruise that almost can’t be seen.

She looks to Sarah’s hands at the thought; Sarah with her elbows on the picnic table, bent forward, focused entirely on Afsheen’s sketch across from her as it comes to life. Her hands are soft fists where they tuck under her chin but her nails are still visible, almost naked with how little nail polish is left. And her hands are clean. Unmarred. Rachel was holding them an hour ago.

Her stomach flutters, gaze fixed on Sarah’s nails. The words come out of her mouth before she can stop them: “Does anyone here have nail polish?”

A few heads rise from their crafts. Olivia looks at Rachel’s hands and her eyebrows quirk in mild suspicion.

“What color?” Sierra asks. She’s done her tree with rainbow leaves – either from the lack of green crayons or the desire to be different.

“Anything,” Rachel says, inspired. “All of them.”

Without discussion, three girls leave the picnic table and disappear into the cabin. Sarah gives Rachel a funny look, but it’s without judgment. Just amusement that wouldn’t mind being clued in.

“I’d like to paint your nails,” Rachel discloses, smiling despite herself at the desire spoken out loud.

She can feel the tenderness of her expression and immediately wants to reign it in with the handful of girls still around them, hating both the urge and the part of her that defiantly wants to take Sarah’s hand in front of everyone. It isn’t a secret, but they aren’t mentioning it all the same. Rachel understands that. She understands the reasoning.

Even so, she flushes at Sarah’s flustered grin.

“Why?” Sarah musters up, but the girls have returned with an entire rainbow of nail polish bottles between them, having apparently borrowed some from the campers inside the cabin as well to ensure they had a full spectrum.

It more than doubles Rachel’s expectations and she clasps her hands together in gratitude, prompting beaming smiles from Sierra, Julisa, and Marlow as they set their treasures on the tabletop. Some of the bottles sparkle; some shine metallic, or shift their colors in the light. It’s a range Rachel’s only seen before in salons and the girls seem to be noticing the dilemma just as Rachel does.

“She only has ten nails, though,” Daniela points out.

Rachel _hmm_ s. Glances to Sarah, whose shoulders lift.

Then: “All right, top ten colors. Go.”

The bracelets and crayons are momentarily abandoned as everyone starts shuffling nail polish bottles around the table in a crude ranking. Sarah eyes just how many glittery polishes are making their way to the front of the line and Rachel suppresses a cackle, surprised at the amount of joy this is bringing her before she’s even truly begun.

“Sarah’s _dying_ ,” Naomi snickers, off Sarah’s expression.

“I know, how’s she gonna be punk rock with sparkly nails?” Clementine’s laugh spurs on Sophia as well, and Sarah playfully smacks both their cheeks across the table.

“Oy,” she says, smiling through her pretend anger. “Punk is an _attitude_ , not an appearance. I could still kick some quality punk behind in a giant prom dress, I’ll have you know.”

Her statement backfires as they suddenly all want to know if she went to prom this year, with a _boy_ , was it _Paul_ , and even though Quinn’s inside for once Rachel’s abdominal muscles are tight from this narrow idea of femininity they seem determined to perpetuate.

“Right, that’s enough,” Rachel cuts in, hand over several bottles of nail polish to redirect them. Clementine and Afsheen sit back on their knees and Naomi feigns innocence with her palms up. “Have we decided on the top ten?”

“I’m way too cool for prom anyway,” Sarah kids, grinning cheekily at all of them, and they give the same in response.

“Yeah, of course you are,” Raya teases as she straightens out a kink in her bracelet.

Sierra’s surprisingly the only one who responds to Rachel’s question, sliding a cluster of bottles towards her with a hopeful expression. _What do you think?_

Rachel’s hit with a doubly-sharp pang – out of nowhere caring so deeply about this being the last week of camp, the last days of seeing these faces, and then the idea of attending a prom with Sarah at her side. Both nostalgia and longing, and she hasn’t felt either in enough time for it to tackle her.

Sarah picks up on it, thankfully; jumps right in to take Rachel’s place with a joking, “Christ, you all just live to see me suffer, don’t you,” that redirects any attention from Rachel’s brain freeze.

They want to see Sarah in hot pink, they’re saying. They want her to have to have heart-shaped glitter.

Rachel finally unfixes her gaze from a bottle of holographic purple to rejoin the scene and files away both emotions to deal with when she has nothing better to do. Surely, with everything planned for this final week of camp, they’ll have a scheduled moment to prematurely miss it. Camp. But also everything.

“Is this the order we want, then?” she says of the bottles, catching Sarah’s eye in gratitude.

“No, put the turquoise next to the rainbow confetti,” Naomi says, and the bottles are shifted again as the girls confer.

When they’ve made their decisions, Sarah presents her hands as if laying them down under the blade of a guillotine. Out of love, this time, and Rachel knows it. That she’s giving them a moment of honesty without having to say a word. The girls can watch her wield the brush so carefully with Sarah’s hands the canvas and whether they hold their breaths or not Rachel’s chest is light.

She starts with a pink that looks nothing like blood. The sun is warm, and Sarah’s skin under Rachel’s touch is warmer.

“I like it,” Sarah says for just the two of them to hear. A whisper. A smile.

They’re side-by-side on the picnic table for what might be the hundredth time this summer and Rachel considers all it’s had to witness and the sheer range of emotions they’ve managed to cover. She’s smiling back, painting Sarah’s index finger lilac. Surprised at the ease with which the motions come.

Like they’ve been doing this forever.

Like they’ve been leading up to this moment forever.

 

* * *

 

Naturally, everyone wants in on it. Sarah’s nails – while a garish assault on the eye – are flawless, and Rachel finds herself promising to do the nails of ten girls in the twenty minutes they have left of quiet hour.

It is doable, she’s fairly certain. If she focuses.

Sarah offers to help but Sarah’s nails are still drying and five minutes in she slips inside to pee, leaving Rachel to balance Zohal’s nails (electric blue, silver sparkles) and the crowd of girls around the picnic table whose conversation very quickly veers into uncharted territory.

“I’ve had cow’s tongue, before, and I don’t think it’s much different,” Sameera’s saying, as Rachel focuses on applying sparkles to Zohal’s pinky.

“My sister said thigh’s the best, though,” Clementine counters. “Or shoulder. Because of all the muscle.”

“The butt’s the biggest muscle in the body,” Naomi says to a bunch of giggles, motioning to Rachel for confirmation until Rachel reluctantly nods.

“Although I wouldn’t recommend… consuming one,” she adds as if that makes her participation on the topic any better.

Sarah still hasn’t emerged from the cabin, but she glances to the porch just in case, wishing, somehow, to find Sarah’s also a witness to this and can agree with her that the worst part is how nonchalantly they’re all discussing it.

Zohal wrinkles her nose but does her best to keep her hand still. “I wouldn’t want to eat _anyone_ ,” she tells Rachel.

“It’s hypothetical,” Isabella W. says. “Like if you had to.”

Rachel exhales slowly through her nose, and then asks, “in what sort of situation would one be forced to choose their preferred body part?”

Zohal has three nails left to go, only two of them sparkles. Rachel gives another longing look to the cabin porch as Clementine and Isabella W. share a giggle that can only mean they’ve discussed this before.

“Have you seen Criminal Minds?” Clementine asks.

Rachel caps the sparkles.

Afsheen sends her a sympathetic glance from the other end of the picnic table where she’s been nearly squeezed out by the conversation, still trying to finish her sketch of the giant pine tree that looms over the side of the cabin. It’s startlingly accurate: not a crooked branch out of place. She already promised it to Sarah, however, who’s been following the progress from the first strokes of the long, skinny trunk. Sarah said she’ll hang it on her bedroom wall.

“I truly hope none of you have seen that show,” Rachel comments much calmer than expected.

She can’t picture herself at ten watching a show about murder, but with the internet and her own childhood experiences she can’t exactly use her younger self as a baseline for what is and isn’t age-appropriate.

“I like CSI better,” Marlow says from the grass, stretched out with Sophia, their scripts for the talent show abandoned between them. “Less drama. Better cases.”

Sarah would know, maybe. What shows kids watch when they have parents who care about them. But Sarah didn’t come to Canada until she was twelve, Rachel remembers, and she hasn’t really been forthcoming about the years before that.

“Only if it’s the good CSIs,” Clementine says and Marlow agrees.

Rachel, scooting Zohal to the end of the bench to let her nails dry, nods along if only to move the topic away from cannibalism.

It’s Isabella W.’s turn to get her nails painted anyway – she hops over to Rachel’s side of the picnic table with her chosen bottle in hand, and Clementine shifts into the spot she left behind, now focused on Marlow as they lay out which CSIs should never have seen the light of day.

The cyber one, of course, they say.

Isabella W. chose blood red, her smirk enough to let Rachel know she’s fully aware of the symbolism. No sparkles.

“Some color,” Rachel can’t help herself from commenting.

Isabella W. doesn’t quite manage a smile in reply. Her eyes are downcast and she twirls the bottle in its place on the table, keeping her gaze on the motion.

“Rachel, you’ll remember us, right? When we all go home?”

She’s young again, instantly, in front of Rachel’s adult figure. Rachel has the rows of their nail polish just to her left. She’s been painting everyone’s nails because she loves them. She’s theirs, she reflects. And she’s grateful for it.

“I couldn’t possibly forget,” she says with a smile that means it, realizing all of them are paying attention. From the grass, from the other end of the table. Her response is satisfying. They smile back.

“You’re my favorite counselor,” Sierra admits as she fiddles with a bracelet taped to the table.

 _Because I had no idea what I was doing?_ Rachel wants to ask, but a few of the girls agree, Julisa and Marlow, and Olivia, for once, doesn’t ruin it with a snarky remark.

“Well, thank-you,” Rachel mumbles, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. “I- appreciate it.”

Isabella W. beams like she got what she needed from this and then uncaps the red nail polish for Rachel, handing over the brush with glee. They can continue. They can go on. All is right with the world once more.

Sarah comes back not a second later and it’s only then that Rachel takes in how long she’s been inside, more from the comical expression on Sarah’s face than the length of the conversations that happened in her absence. _But I survived it_ , Rachel feels like telling her. _They stopped talking about cannibalism._

“Oh my _god_ ,” Sarah hisses as she drops onto the bench beside Rachel, nearly at her ear, and then she sort of laughs and groans at the same time as she leans into Rachel’s side. “You won’t believe what just-”

Several heads have risen, clearly also interested, and Sarah cuts herself off as she realizes. She assesses Rachel’s task at hand – five nails to go.

“Nearly there,” Rachel says, and Sarah says, “good. Then we’ll…”

She motions to the porch, which seems so benign in the daylight. Rachel wants to laugh at all the awful things it’s heard from them and how dire it all felt, and she knows it was, but on the other side of it she almost can’t believe it occurred. A dream, perhaps. She’d call it a nightmare but those always feel real.

Rachel finishes the last red nail to Isabella W.’s delight and announces a quick break, which garners a couple complaints from the next girls in line.

“We’ll still have time,” Rachel assures. “Don’t worry. If not now then before dinner, I promise.”

Sarah snatches Rachel’s hand as soon as she starts to untangle herself from the picnic table, and the flush that hits Rachel’s cheeks barely has time to surface before Sarah’s dragging her over to the porch steps to have a little more privacy. They sit on the second from the bottom so they’re both on the same level. Rachel leans against the railing, soaking in the warmth.

“So,” Sarah says, her eyes sparkling.

“So,” Rachel echoes, unable to stop her smile.

It’s ridiculous; she doesn’t even know what Sarah’s going to tell her, only that it could be anything and she’d still be over the moon to be the one who gets to hear it. Who would’ve thought that Rachel Duncan would have-

Well, a friend.

A companion.

“So I walk in, dying to pee, which I did get to eventually, in case you’re concerned.” Sarah still hasn’t released Rachel’s hand, and every minute gesture includes both their hands, dancing over Sarah’s knee. “Anyway, guess who I see on the same bed, like, clearly in a moment?”

“Who?” Rachel says.

Sarah grins at her enthusiasm, and then her face goes back to her storytelling seriousness. “Quinn and Madeleine, Madeleine crying, Quinn practically hugging her.”

“ _No_ ,” Rachel says, and as an afterthought, “is Madeleine okay?”

Sarah waves it off with their clutched hands. “Yeah, yeah her grandpa died, but she’ll be fine. But just picture like the two least likely people to be holding each other – and I walk in on that, they thought they were alone, so, and I swear Quinn threatened my life if I told a soul. Can’t have anyone thinking she’s gone soft, of course.”

Rachel laughs and Sarah laughs with her, maybe knowing exactly what she’s said or completely oblivious to the flipping of Rachel’s stomach at being Sarah’s one exception.

“You’re telling me now, though,” Rachel can’t help saying.

Sarah’s smile grows bashful and she pushes her hair back with her free hand. “I mean, obviously I was gonna tell you. We’re…”

It hangs there, and Rachel nods understandingly with the tiny lift of Sarah’s shoulders.

“You know, they might be us in five years,” Rachel says solely to quash Sarah’s mild embarrassment. “Quinn and Madeleine. Didn’t they say they’d be working here?”

Sarah’s eyebrows go up in consideration. “Yeah. Shit.”

“Obviously without all the… grief and horrors,” Rachel clarifies, and Sarah laughs.

“I’m sure they’ll find something,” Sarah says. “Everybody has their own camp horror story.”

Rachel only has to think back to Shay’s exhaustion to agree. But she truly can picture it: Quinn and Madeleine. Not so much the extreme back and forth emotions, but just… finding each other. Even after tearing the other one apart.

Sarah takes the lull to rest her head on Rachel’s shoulder, her fingers curling a little firmer around Rachel’s hand as she gazes out at the scene before them. The girls in the grass and still chatting at the table. Nail polish. A spread of crayons. Embroidery thread dropped in the dirt. In six days it will all be gone.

Six days. And then something else will begin.

 

* * *

 

That night, just before midnight, they’re woken up by a bugle that precedes several administrative staff coming round to drag everyone out of bed.

“Grab your swimsuits!” the one outside Rachel’s cabin calls. “Midnight dip!”

They’d had advanced warning, of course, mainly to ensure the counselors would be in their cabins at the right time, but the kids stumble blindly through the dark in confusion and it takes everything Rachel has not to laugh as they congregate by the picnic tables before heading to the lake.

It’s the image of them all: pillow-creased, wild hair, their bathing suits hanging from limp hands in the moonlight as they try to figure out what’s going on.

Sarah catches her eye and Rachel dissolves into giggles that quickly spur on the rest of the group. Somewhere on the grounds the sixes and sevens are probably in tears and the idea makes Rachel laugh even harder, wiping her eyes, knowing it falls on Delphine to corral them. (She’s a terrible person, but this is something she can live with.)

“Last year,” Sarah murmurs, sidling up to Rachel with her bikini in hand, “Angela wasn’t even here for the wakeup call. Too bloody blazed to find her way out of the woods.”

Rachel lets out a whisper of a gasp, grinning at Sarah’s wry smile.

“Told her kids a bear ate her,” Sarah says with a shrug.

“Sarah!” Rachel chastises, as the last camper, Daniela, staggers out of the cabin.

Sarah tells the group to start heading out, then says to Rachel, “you’d think they would’ve cared, at least,” and shoots ahead to lead the pack as Rachel’s left with her laughter.

The air is electric when they reach the lake – it’s a clear night, stars vibrant, heavy moon catching in the water’s overlapping folds. Sarah’s seen it like this before; Rachel looks over to find her watching Beth in her own cluster of kids, and she truly hopes it feels full circle. For the both of them.

Beth isn’t swimming, at least. She and the girl in long sleeves, both finding a spot in the sand when everyone else goes to change, busying themselves with a hand game they almost can’t see in the dark. But everything’s visible with the moon like this: the bracelets, the hair neither had time to brush.

“It’s weird, isn’t it,” Sarah comments when it’s her turn to catch Rachel watching Beth. From the change rooms, Beth could almost be anyone. If they focus on the horizon. Stare straight where the water meets its reflection.

“It’s cold,” Rachel says, just to change the subject.

She rubs her bare arms, grateful for her one-piece with how little skin Sarah’s bikini manages to cover. (Though she’s equally grateful for the bikini on Sarah, for the exact same reason.)

“Yeah, but the lake’s warm,” Sarah says, and then she puts an arm around Rachel’s shoulders, adding, “and you’ve got me to warm you up.”

A second later the rest of their group comes out of the change rooms and Rachel shivers, anticipating the removal of Sarah’s arm, nearly tipping over in surprise as it stays put. Sarah grins and moves them both forward in the same position – like a gentleman, Rachel wants to say, but softer than any man could ever hope to be.

Madeleine gives them a curious glance as they all head back to the water, though she doesn’t say anything.

Rachel wonders if she wants her to. If she’d still feel like she’s breathing in helium or if that’s only the sword that hangs overhead of being completely, one hundred percent honest.

The lifeguards give their short safety speech from the dock as the whole camp huddles in the chilly air, too many conversations happening at once for anyone to properly hear them. It’s the same as always, anyway. The only difference now is it’s just after midnight – and then the director blows his ceremonial whistle, letting the midnight dip commence.

“Race you?” Sarah says, to everyone, to Rachel, before taking off into the water with the rest of the rush.

Rachel hangs back, just a second. Shares a nervous smile with Evie.

Then they’re running, shrieking, laughing as the cold shock of water overtakes them and pulls them under. The lake churns with the immense surge of people moving through it, propelling Rachel underwater even as she stops trying. She ends up somewhere near the end of the dock. It’s too dark to fully see, but her hand hits a post as she surfaces. A moment later Sarah splashes her, pleased to find she caught up.

“Come on,” Sarah says, moving under the dock where the light doesn’t reach at all.

She looks like Medusa with her hair wet: curls stuck to her face, somehow still untamed, turning Rachel to stone with their beauty before she manages to follow.

Sarah glimmers in the water. Even in the darkness, even under the dock where she takes Rachel’s hand.

It’s a bit of a struggle to keep themselves afloat like this, trying to tread water and hold on at the same time, but after a moment they find a balance and Sarah’s smile is enough to warm Rachel from head to toe. Sarah was right, after all. The lake hasn’t let the cold air get to it. Somewhere underneath it’s still holding sun.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Sarah says, whispers, despite being the only ones under the dock.

Everyone’s mostly out where they can see the stars, or around the floating dock where the lifeguards have a couple inner tubes and a noodle raft. It’s the same lake as always, Rachel feels like telling them, at the way everyone’s laughing, but she knows that’s not true. She can feel it, here with Sarah. That something in the night makes a difference.

“What, finally step foot in the lake?” Rachel asks, not quite hitting the teasing tone she was going for.

She knows, anyway, as Sarah chooses not to acknowledge it, instead releasing her hand with the faintest smirk. 

The loss of contact is temporary. Sarah’s touch moves to Rachel’s waist under the water, to her back, the two of them even closer than a minute ago. Their legs treading water create a tiny whirlpool between them – theirs and theirs alone.

“This,” Sarah says. And she kisses her.

They both taste like lake water; Rachel slips under, a bit, but her lips find Sarah’s again, and her heart races as the shrieks of laughter from the rest of camp go on without them. Maybe someone sees them. Or not. When the break apart Rachel’s cheeks are hot and the heat goes all the way down, through her core, just at the way her body feels with Sarah’s.

They’re taking it slow, she reminds herself. This is slow.

“So? Was it worth nearly drowning?” Sarah asks breathlessly, her chin barely out of the water herself.

Rachel sends a splash in her direction, feigning irritation. “I am a perfectly capable swimmer when someone isn’t _smothering_ me,” she says, and Sarah laughs and launches forward to pull Rachel under the water with her.

When they surface, sputtering, Rachel clings to Sarah like a dead weight and forces her to tread water for the both of them. Sarah only protests a little before giving in, which is valiant enough for Rachel to kick as well to keep them mostly afloat.

She doesn’t mind her mouth underwater with it also resting on Sarah’s neck. Everything feels strange under the surface; slick, slippery, like they shouldn’t be able to maintain the contact they do. Where her lips brush, Rachel can feel Sarah’s pulse, racing. Her skin is cold. And yet the places where they touch are warm, a heat between them that reaches the water.

Sarah chances taking a hand out of the water to comb back Rachel’s wet hair, tucking it behind her ear as they both dip lower. Rachel has to let go as her nose goes under, reluctantly choosing to breathe over holding on, but she stays close enough that their legs keep brushing as they tread.

“It’d be nice to kiss you where our feet could touch the bottom,” Sarah laments softly, smiling at Rachel’s smile.

It’s an automatic reaction at this point – anything Sarah says gets a stupid smile, simply because Sarah’s saying it to her. It’s _awful_. If Rachel could make fun of herself she would, but she has to settle on rolling her eyes.

“They’d all see us,” she replies. “If we went any closer.”

Sarah exhales and shivers with it. “I know. But just…”

“I know,” Rachel says.

They don’t stay under the dock for much longer, swimming out to harass their kids before it’s time to go back to bed. But even as they towel off and get back into pyjamas Rachel can still feel Sarah’s lips on hers – a ghost of them, and she hopes it stays until morning.

 

* * *

 

Sarah wakes from a dream before the sun’s really had a chance to rise, and at first she isn’t sure whose bed she’s in or what day it is before the familiar dark of her cabin fills in the edges.

She’d been dreaming of Rachel. They were dancing, and then they were just holding each other, and eventually they were both asleep. Together. It felt real enough for her arms to expect a weight in them as she shifts in her blankets – and there’s a soreness there, too, at the absence.

“Sarah,” she hears, barely a whisper.

More of the dark moves around until she sees someone in her doorway. The door’s open halfway, a small figure hesitantly poised to enter, coming into focus as Sarah realizes why she woke up.

“What is it?” she replies.

Naomi steps into the tiny room, careful not to make a creak. She’s in her pyjamas, hair silky where it isn’t caught in a tangle at the back of her head. “Out the window,” she says. “Just in the trees. I was coming back from the bathroom when I saw them.”

Sarah sits up so she can see more out her window than the dimly grey sky where it isn’t full of treetops and Naomi climbs onto the bed to point out exactly what she means. (A little to steal Sarah’s warmth, too. The end of August is cold, cold in the mornings, and Naomi wiggles her legs under Sarah’s blanket.)

“Right there,” Naomi whispers. She has her finger to the glass and Sarah finally sees it – a pair of deer in the forest.

“Oh,” Sarah breathes.

They could be twins. Identical, down to the angle of their necks as they eat from an overgrown bush. Naomi leans into Sarah’s side and Sarah thinks about her sister.

She’d love it here. The kids, the wilderness, the freedom.

One of the deer lifts its head just a little, maybe sensing someone watching. Helena would befriend it; Sarah knows this for a fact. Her sister would have all the wild creatures eating out of the palm of her hand and the kids would think she’s literal sunshine. It feels a little greedy, to be the one who gets to be here. Who gets to witness this.

If she could save her memories…

“I wish Nate could see this,” Naomi murmurs, her head against Sarah’s shoulder.

Sarah wants to ask if it aches. If it always feels like this: a severed limb she can’t reattach. Or if it’s just that Sarah’s never had it, the relationship, and her body doesn’t know what to do with the loss but mythologize it.

“I wish my sister could see it too,” Sarah replies. Naomi twists to look up at her, a knowing expression on her face.

Outside, the second deer steps to another part of the bush. Sarah feels Naomi hold her breath as the movement seems to cause panic in the first deer, whose ears are alert before it hurries to follow and calms once they’re together again. Inseparable. Naomi exhales.

“Sometimes I think these things are like messages,” Naomi admits, pulling at the blanket until it’s at her waist. “The things I see without him.”

“Messages from him?” Sarah asks.

“Maybe. Maybe something bigger. Or just- something else.” Naomi’s still watching the deer, but Sarah finds herself watching the moment play out in Naomi’s eyes, the consideration and the awe.

Sarah’s fingers move to the tangle in Naomi’s hair, softly starting to work through it. Naomi melts into her at the contact. A warmth at her side.

“What do the messages mean, d’you think?” Sarah says.

Naomi’s shoulders lift, then drop. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know. Not just yet. But-”

She stops talking and a second later the deer both startle, heads shooting up, gone before Sarah gets a chance to take in what’s happening. Whatever they heard wasn’t loud enough for her to catch but her heart races just the same.

“I like to think they’re good messages,” Naomi finishes and Sarah gets the last of the tangle out.

Naomi’s hand comes back to feel, and she smiles gratefully at the new smoothness of her hair. Sarah’s grateful Naomi doesn’t say anything about _her_ hair, which she knows without feeling is attempting to turn itself into a storm cloud. She’s a restless sleeper even when her dreams are happy. S says it’s because she can never stop moving.

“It’s been a good summer,” Sarah says to Naomi, off of nothing in particular. Just the soft feeling of the two of them under her blanket. Still watching the spot where the deer had been.

“It has,” Naomi agrees. “I wish it didn’t have to end. Even though, school and everything. If I could just… pause all that, or…”

“Just stay like this a little longer,” Sarah provides, and Naomi nods, releasing a long breath. “I know. God, we’re almost there.”

Naomi chances a tangly curl that hangs over Sarah’s shoulder, slipping her fingers through it to attempt to straighten it out. It’s brave. Her fingers get stuck immediately but she tries again.

“Next year I’ll be at the senior camp, and you’ll be here,” she says. Her other hand comes up to help the knot and Sarah considers offering a brush if she really wants to do this. But she’s determined; something to focus on while they sit with their dread.

“I’m visiting,” Sarah says. “I already promised Quinn.”

It gets a smile in response that Sarah instantly has to mirror. Her kids. She’ll be visiting her kids who went and outgrew her. But of course she’ll be proud. Anyone would, at how great they all are.

“But with Rachel though, right? Because you two are like-” Naomi’s tongue slips out as she digs into the core of the knot, and Sarah waits for the end of her sentence with butterflies. “-Seth and Rudy, now.”

Sarah snorts. “Oh god, I hope we’re not that bad.”

“No, like the good version. Just that you’re always together now.” The brunt of the knot comes off in Naomi’s fingers. She stares at it for a second before dropping it off the bed, and it dances all the way to the floor to join the rest of the dirt.

“I really like her,” Sarah can’t help admitting. It’s a gift to hear it out loud.

Naomi looks up from another knot and gives her a fond, understanding smile.

“I know,” she says. “That’s why I want to see her next year too.”

It _might_ break the agreement not to say anything directly to their kids. Sarah isn’t sure how Rachel would feel about this, the way Naomi’s smile disclosed how much she knows, and how Sarah’s just given confirmation.

But it isn’t a Beth kind of secret. That’s what they agreed upon. It isn’t something they need to keep forever, or ensure doesn’t slip out because its reveal would cause harm. In fact, Rachel was the one who suggested the kids have probably figured it out. They know everything, she said. And Sarah’s glad. Sarah’s glad they can put pieces together without needing direction. It saves her from trying to muster up any more rootless scraps of bravery. After the summer she’s had…

Naomi unknots another clump of curls, grinning triumphantly.

“Almost enough for a little braid,” she says.

Sarah smiles appreciatively. “Nice. Probably the first time all summer.”

“I wanna put one in before I go back to bed, okay?” Naomi asks. “Just a little one.”

“Okay,” Sarah says. They have time. Even if they didn’t, she’d find a way to make some.

 

* * *

 

Predictably, the day of the talent show arrives without anyone feeling prepared, and the morning’s activities are shuffled around to ensure additional time to practice before the specialty staff have to prove they’ve done more this summer than finger-paint and play freeze dance.

Sarah enjoys the panic solely because it doesn’t involve her.

Her kids are only in some skits and a tragic dance number, required to choose at least two of the specialist-organized acts, foregoing any acts of their own (or Alison’s attempt at something from Hairspray) for more time in the audience with the snacks.

“It’s mostly the little kids whose parents come up anyway,” Quinn said when Sarah pressed, getting a general agreement from the other girls in their bunks.

Of course, after years of sitting through the same loose routines and bad jokes, it would make sense that the oldest campers’ parents wouldn’t find it as quite as important to make another drive up two days before camp ends. Sarah can’t blame them. But she wishes she could show them their kids’ faces as they shrug off the lack of attendance all the same.

Thursday morning starts with free time, then, as the campers are allotted half an hour after breakfast to practice their own acts before the specialists take over.

While the rest of the kids split off into their groups to rehearse Sarah and Rachel’s girls return to the cabin, all piling into Sarah’s half as she reveals the stash of mini muffins she managed to sneak out of the mess hall in a move that would make Tony proud.

It’s crowded, twenty girls squeezing onto bunks and the threadbare rug on the ground, still a bit chilly from the sun’s lazy rising, and about as noisy as Sarah expects. The girls on the floor start a game of cards. The ones on the bunks get crumbs in other people’s sleeping bags, stretched out like piles of puppies.

Leaning against the dresser, Sarah oversees with her hand carefully brushing Rachel’s. The girls and their conversations. The way the light fills with dust where it streams through the curtains.

Rachel seems to watch in the same breathless way, just a motherly fly on the wall. Sarah curls a finger against Rachel’s wrist; solidarity, or something, for how neither can look away.

Her throat aches before she can identify the emotion that comes with it – and then Rachel says _don’t start_ as Sarah opens her mouth to speak, not even knowing what would’ve come out. Something about the end, most likely. That what they’re witnessing is so finite it’s already crumbling inside of her.

“Good god,” Rachel expresses, pressing a finger to the corner of her eye. “Turns out you can be a pain in my behind without even talking.”

She only laughs as Sarah does, the sound husked by the pull of tears she won’t let fall, but Sarah’s willing to let her blame the cold morning and unexpected free time on this atypical lack of composure.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, really meaning, _but you feel it too, right? How close we are to the edge? How sharp and weird and hollow that is?_

Rachel gives her a look that would feel like daggers if it weren’t for her glassy eyes. And then she sighs.

Marlow looks up from her spot on the floor not too far from their feet, a smudge of chocolate on her lip, and despite the tiny muffins and the card game she seems to be experiencing the same turmoil.

“Today doesn’t even really count, now, for a real day of camp,” she says, her chocolaty lip wobbling as she tries not to flash her hand of cards. “We had today and tomorrow, and now we don’t have today anymore, and-”

She doesn’t start crying, if only for the tackle of a hug Sahar gives her to prevent the rest of her sentiment from coming out.

“Come _on_ ,” Quinn groans from a top bunk, smacking her palm against one of Madeleine’s magazines, but it isn’t as sharp is it should be. Madeleine glances at her from the end of the sleeping bag, amused. “The second one of you starts babbling then everyone’ll fall apart, and I don’t want to spend my morning seeing everybody’s snotty noses.”

“More likely you don’t want to start crying yourself, because then people will know you’re actually a marshmallow inside,” Raya says, grinning, and Sarah braces for the fallout.

Instead, to Sarah’s surprise, Quinn merely rolls her eyes in Madeleine’s direction, and the two of them go back to their magazines with faint smiles they mostly manage to conceal.

“Told you,” Rachel murmurs at Sarah’s ear, before slinking off to Sarah’s room.

Sarah’s left standing alone at the dresser in her bewilderment, at Quinn’s casual attitude and Rachel’s speedy shift from teary-eyed to smug and the two girls on the carpet who are still half hugging in the middle of their card game as if it’s completely normal to be feeling everything at once.

She rubs her hands over her face to let it all simmer and then realizes Rachel left, as in Rachel’s in her room, on her _bed_ , and there’s no actual reason for her to still be standing here like an unwanted chaperone.

Their girls are good, anyway. All emotional needs tended to by one another. Any snacking needs tended to by Sarah’s pilfered mini muffins and the box of chocolate-covered raisins someone pulled out of their bag. She’s only still watching because her brain’s stuck in some End-of-Days fog, and she sucks in a breath and follows Rachel’s path to her tiny room.

(God, her sweet little room. She only has three more sleeps in it, two with the girls still on the other side of the thin door, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to go home without it. Or the woods, or the dust, or-)

“Fifteen minutes until we have to head to the first session,” Rachel says, perched on Sarah’s bed, the corner of a blanket folded back to cover her bare legs.

She looks so natural in this setting that Sarah’s hit with another wave of mourning. _Think of all the times you were on the other side of that wall, in your own bed, when you could’ve been sitting here…_

Rachel’s eyebrows shift in sympathy and she pats the bed beside her, delicately, like she too is aware of the brevity of this experience. Part of Sarah wants to glance back to make sure their kids are still occupied but she doesn’t, just sits with her arm touching Rachel’s and tries not to say anything sappy.

“Wish they’d add like, a surprise ninth week or something,” she mumbles, close enough to sappy that she momentarily shuts her eyes until Rachel breathes out a laugh through her nose.

“But then we’d miss all those real-life things,” Rachel replies, soft, eyes on Sarah’s folded fingers. “Like, shopping for school, or… a day at the beach, or… the fair…”

“The fair, the Exhibition? Like the games and rides and stuff?” Sarah questions. “Have you ever been? Doesn’t exactly sound like your cup of tea, no offence.”

She’s trying to picture Rachel on a midway with a giant pretzel and can’t get past the expression of pure disgust she’s sure Rachel would be sporting. It’s crowded, loud, people seem to enjoy spitting on the ground for others to step in. Vic took Sarah once, another world ago. He won her a stuffed penguin at the shooting range; shattering plate after plate after plate.

Rachel manages a dignified shrug. “I think it would depend on the company. Which… is my point.”

Sarah blinks until Rachel takes her hand, an absolute block of ice this morning, and then it clicks.

“Ohh,” Sarah says, wrapping her other hand around the back of Rachel’s as if this might warm it up. “Like… together. Us.”

She’d hang her head if Rachel _didn’t_ laugh, just for how stupid she manages to sound, and Rachel chuckles and shivers and moves closer all at once, giving Sarah a good idea how that kind of evening would go. She’d put her jacket around Rachel’s shoulders,  a moment all their own on the crowded midway. They’d skip the funnel cake, for the strawberry sauce, or maybe eat it for the same red reason, able to find it funny with the woods so far behind them.

But it’d be warm. Bright artificial lights in the darkness.

“I’m just saying, there could be more to come. If you want,” Rachel says to their hands in her lap.

Sarah glances at Rachel’s watch without thinking, heart lurching at the nine minutes they have left until yet another moment will be shoved behind them. But she gets what Rachel’s saying. Shit goes on. (And then under that, in a place she knows neither will voice, there’s the truth that this could be the first time either of them have had a reason to look forward to it.)

“I do,” she says, when she realizes Rachel’s still staring at the same spot, and Rachel finally looks up with a bashful smile. “All of it. Although you’re fucked if you think I’m swimming in Lake Ontario, Miss Day-at-The-Beach. I know what drains into it.”

“That is entirely fine by me,” Rachel replies, and straightens up a little as she checks her watch as well.

Oh, her expression says. Sarah shakes her head in agreement.

“You’re with the dance specialist, yes?” Rachel asks, and Sarah says _yeah, Beth too_. There’s a pause as they both stare at each other: waiting for the Beth-snag. When it passes without pain, Sarah chances the tiniest smile that Rachel matches with her own. “Well, I hope it isn’t too agonizing, for everyone’s sake. I know the choreography was a little…”

Sarah laughs. “Yeah, Jesus.”

There’s the sound of movement in the cabin, girls realizing the time and wrapping things up without having to be told. Rachel’s sigh is self-deprecating, capped with a smile as she releases Sarah’s hand and stands up to leave the blanket behind.

“I should’ve worn sweatpants,” Rachel laments, as Sarah stretches her back before pushing off the bed as well.

“Oh,” Sarah says, suddenly at Rachel’s side. It’d be less cramped if Sarah picked up after herself, she knows, but this time her open suitcase on the floor is a positive. “Wanna borrow a pair of mine? They’re almost clean.”

It’s Rachel’s turn to laugh, brushing it off until she looks at the suitcase. “Isn’t that- I mean-”

“If you’re cold,” Sarah says, close enough to know this is true. Rachel has goosebumps, for fuck’s sake.

“Well,” Rachel considers. She presses her lips together, glancing between the suitcase and Sarah, something easing in her the third time she does so. “Yes, actually. I’d appreciate that.”

Sarah grins, embarrassingly, before dropping down to grab her softer pair of sweatpants. Rachel’s sporting the same half-bitten back smile when Sarah hands them over and Sarah’s sure the lightness of her chest isn’t something she’s experiencing alone with the way Rachel holds the material.

They have a tie-dye stain on the knee, blotchy purple, but Sarah knows she doesn’t have to say that. Rachel isn’t going to care what they look like or that Sarah’s tied a few too many knots in the drawstring. The point is they’re borrowed; the point is they’re hers, and everyone will know.

She leaves her to change with another little grin, Rachel smiling and still not looking at the pants even as Sarah pulls the door shut behind her.

“Two minutes,” she tells the girls, resuming her place at the dresser.

The playing cards are back in the box, left neatly on someone’s vacant bottom bunk. Madeleine and Sahar are sweeping up muffin crumbs but they stop to acknowledge they heard. It’s still crowded. Still a few too many girls for the cabin to hold comfortably, but they’re happy with it. They wear braids that Sarah had no part in making, today, and are either squished together on the beds or around the mirror in the bathroom.

Almost ready. They’re all almost ready. Quinn tells her from where she’s helping Daniela with a messy bun, and Sarah says _good. Good, I’m glad._

 

* * *

 

Unpredictably: Sarah cries during the talent show.

She’s on a hard bench between Rachel and Cosima, all staff relegated to the back so the parents who made it can take the best seats in front. She’s playing with one of Rachel’s bracelets, slipping her fingers between the bracelet and Rachel’s soft skin. She’s unprepared for the children on stage to sing.

And that’s all. That’s all she’ll admit to.

The audience joins for the second verse and Sarah’s busy wiping her cheeks – her friends give her teasing smiles, but several parents are crying too, and the clenching in her chest doesn’t lessen as the song goes on about goodbyes.

“We’re coming for Christmas, relax,” Cosima responds when Sarah finally blubbers out something about everyone being so far away once camp’s over.

Rachel shifts a little at the comment, but Sarah has mascara clouding her vision and misses her expression. _Don’t worry_ , she wants to tell her. _It won’t change anything_. But then it might be a little presumptuous to just assume they’ll still be… whatever, at Christmas, no matter how she feels, and she’s not sure if she’s supposed to talk about the future.

The big future. What comes after that promised soft landing at the end of camp.

She streaks mascara across the side of her hand as it wipes under her eye, the smear a scratchy black like a language she never learned how to read.

“It will go by fast,” Delphine promises, from Cosima’s other side. They’re whispering. The kids are finding new places on stage to sing their next song, this one with rain sticks they made in arts and crafts. “The whole year. We’ll be here again before you know it.”

“Yeah,” Sarah agrees, nodding, doubting it nonetheless.

Rachel becomes aware of the mascara smear, running her fingers over it like Braille – and it’s dry now, it has to be, because Rachel’s fingers come away clean.

On stage, Beth’s kid with the long sleeves is smiling at someone in the audience. A parent. Sarah looks for Beth in the crowded rec hall out of habit; it doesn’t take her breath away to find her with Alison, the two perched against a side wall with a few of their kids at their feet. The ones Alison couldn’t force into singing, Sarah guesses. But everyone looks content. No tears in their eyes.

None of Sarah’s kids are even on the stage, which is probably the most pathetic part of her brief breakdown. They’re all up front on the floor with popcorn, dance done, skits over, grinning every time Sarah catches sight of one. They’re parentless, so this is just another night for them. Never mind that it’s the second-last one of the summer.

God, she needs a drink.

“I have to tell you something,” Rachel whispers, right as the rain sticks start.

Every single time Sarah’s startled by how much it sounds like rain. Gentle, climbing, a storm just finding its footing. (Was there a storm this summer that didn’t ache? She can’t remember.)

“Nothing that’ll make me cry again, right?” she whispers back.

Rachel presses her lips together. “Mm… there’s a possibility.”

She smiles a little, though, which is neither encouraging nor discouraging, and Sarah breathes out. At least the song the kids are singing isn’t as depressing. But it’s still camp. They’re still trapped in the rec hall with nearly every living person on the grounds, still watching performances in front of layered backdrops that can only be called abstract, still clapping when the song ends and the kids bow and her stomach drops at even more time slipping away.

“In your cabin earlier,” Rachel starts, and Sarah looks away, not wanting to know, briefly catching Beth’s eye before reluctantly nodding to let Rachel continue. “Sarah, I’m afraid you have ants.”

Cosima’s snort of a laugh cuts through the general murmurs of the crowd as the next act takes the stage and several parents turn back to look.

“No,” Sarah proclaims. “No bloody way do I- _how_?”

Rachel’s giggle starts with Delphine’s, and Sarah throws her hands up at all _three_ of them, laughing at what might as well be the very end of the world. After all her precautions, her rules, smuggling containers from home… She needs air, she tells them, stepping out before she ruins the magic show some of Rudy’s boys are about to do on stage. (Not that she’s sure she _could_ ruin it, but she’d like to make it through the evening without another dirty look from a parent.)

It’s cool outside – and darker than she expects – and it’s a blatant reminder of how little time is left until September. Until she’s stuck back at school, stuck repeating what should’ve been her last year of high school, stuck with life and responsibilities and no real time to see Rachel, no matter what she promised.

The only part of it she expects to pass quickly is any time they manage to find together.

She hasn’t made it farther than the bottom of the shaky steps to the rec hall, and this only occurs to her as the door opens again – surely she’d intended to at least find a picnic table somewhere, but it’s Rachel who comes out anyway, and Sarah lets herself slump when Rachel meets her on the dusty packed earth.

“I think Beth’s coming too,” Rachel says, the last thing Sarah expects.

Sure enough, as Rachel slips an arm around Sarah’s waist, Beth ducks out of the rec hall with the expression of someone who never wanted to see a magic trick in her life and was forced to sit through several. She smiles wanly at the two of them. Doesn’t quite come all the way down the steps, like there’s still a little wall.

“Sorry to intrude,” she says, shifting her weight, then finally leaning against the railing. “But I wasn’t sure how many people could escape before the director locks the door and I _really_ don’t want to be trapped in there when Alison’s thing comes up.”

Rachel’s fingers tighten against Sarah’s side, briefly, as if they’re unsure what shape they want to take. A fist or an open palm.

“That bad, huh?” Sarah asks. She realizes her own hands are clenched and relaxes them, maybe to remind the rest of her body.

Beth’s smirk is wry, easy. “You thought the dance was bad. This…”

She lifts her shoulders in a shrug, and it shifts the ends of her sleeves just enough for the bracelets to peek through, for a moment, like a flash of lightning in this grey, dull evening sky. They’re bloodstained. Sarah’s is too; Sarah will have Beth’s blood on her until the bracelet falls off.

If she mentioned it she’s pretty sure Rachel would turn to stone at her side, already stiff enough with the three of them breathing the same air. It was Rachel who first noticed the stain on the bracelet, wasn’t it? It was Rachel who made the bracelets to hide Beth’s scars. Weirdly, Sarah wasn’t surprised when she found out. Rachel catches all the microscopic things – she’s built a life around that, spotting the tiniest cracks.

“Sarah’s cabin has ants,” Rachel says, finally, gracing the silence with her voice.

She says it so lightly that Beth’s face almost doesn’t register it at first, but then it does, a stone dropped in water, something rippling outwards as she takes it in.

“Damn,” she says. Her lips twist into a smile, trying to fit in an apology. “They got you last year too, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Sarah replies and Beth shakes her head.

Paul knew. Last year. Sarah was quick to complain, quick to tell herself she trusted him. She tries to picture him telling Beth – it coming up in conversation, maybe even after the summer was over. But she can’t. She just keeps coming back to what Paul said, that Beth asked him to do the fortune thing with him.

Because people keep trying. No one _really_ wants to let go, even when it seems like the end. She tries not to think of Beth in the water but it’s there for a second anyway.

 _Are you happy?_ she wants to ask. It still isn’t the right question. Maybe it never will be. Maybe all they can do is talk around it, like this, with shit that doesn’t matter. Because this is how they’re moving forward.

“At least it’s now, just before we go home,” she says, and Rachel agrees. That same stiff look on her face.

“I’m sure you’ll survive it,” Rachel says. “You are bigger than them, after all.”

She catches Beth’s eye, the two of them sharing something that pulls a string in Sarah’s chest. Something delicate. Hopeful.

“She’s strong,” Beth says. “It’d take more than an infestation to wear her down.”

The smile is more than Sarah expects, and it’s momentarily debilitating. An eclipse she didn’t prepare for. All she can do is watch it play out through Rachel’s smile, eventually joining them with one of her own.

“I mean,” Rachel says, and her voice is soft with guilt even before she takes a step away from Sarah. “If she can make it through this summer…”

It retains its sharpness just for what it is, and as Beth’s expression shifts Sarah understands why Rachel wanted to distance herself from it. It’s too close, Sarah wants to tell her. Too close to what they shouldn’t say if they want to keep going like they’re over it. She doesn’t have Rachel’s hand on her waist anymore, or she’d squeeze her fingers as a harsh reminder.

She gives her a look that equals the same.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel murmurs, refusing Sarah’s eye contact. “I shouldn’t-”

Beth moves to the bottom step. “No, you’re right.” She has a hand wrapped around her wrist, around the bracelets under her sleeve. Sarah wonders if she knows she’s doing it. “Not everyone could have. It’s… admirable. That everyone did.”

Sarah’s heart punches the inside of her chest; she wants to know if it’s only her, or if their hearts are trying to flee as well. Rachel still won’t look at her but she doesn’t flinch when Beth tries, and then it’s just Sarah watching the both of them, both exchanging a glance she can’t decipher, separated by a few feet of empty space that refuses to give in to the dusk.

Maybe they would’ve said more. Maybe Beth would’ve moved closer, or Rachel would’ve brought Sarah into the gap just to change its meaning, but whatever was going to come next is interrupted by the door opening and Alison sharply reminding them tonight is about the _kids, thank-you very much_ , so if they could kindly return to show their support, and as they drag themselves back inside Beth puts a careful hand on Sarah’s shoulder to apologize.

“It’s what kept her going,” she murmurs, easing the door shut behind them. “She’s just trying to make it, too.”

 

* * *

 

On the last morning, Sarah wakes up to tears that aren’t her own. They made cards, they say, as they pile into her bed, everyone talking at once, handing over the goodbyes they’ve been working on in secret. By the time she hauls herself upright she has a lump in her throat that feels like a boulder.

“Read mine first,” Quinn insists. She’s sitting half on Sarah’s pillow, half on Naomi’s leg. Her card is almost as sparkly as the one Sarah made for Beth and it adds ten pounds to the boulder in her throat.

Sarah moves her fingers carefully over the sequins, breath catching at her name inside in Quinn’s loopy handwriting.

_Sarah. Even though you make stupid mistakes, I know why, and I still want to be you when I’m older. Then when there’s a camper like me I’ll be able to tell them I know what it’s like to be angry and lonely too._

Quinn reads over Sarah’s shoulder until she’s squirming, needing Sarah to say something to the paragraph of affection Sarah’s up too early to truly process. The rest of the girls wait patiently, holding the cards that all seem far too heavy for paper, and Sarah pulls her knees up to give them a little more room and to have a place to rest her chin while she grasps for anything she can say in response.

“Dude…” she finally warbles. It must be soft enough, because Quinn has her in a chokehold of a hug a second later, whispering a loving threat into her ear to keep the contents of the card a secret until she dies.

“You know I will,” Sarah swears.

Quinn lets go in satisfaction then puts her hand out for the next card to pass over, clearly taking on the role of director for this early morning ceremony. Sarah kind of wishes they would’ve let her brush her teeth first, but she appreciates the dog pile, ten extra bodies in her tiny bed, all on top of each other, and has joined them with tears by the third card.

(Really, Naomi mentioned the deer and Sarah had no choice, but it’s still a gesture of solidarity.)

It’s a miracle they manage to roll up to breakfast with only the odd sniffle – by the time they get themselves together, nearly every cabin’s already in line or eating and Sarah’s a tiny bit disappointed Rachel didn’t wait for her. Not that they’d agreed to do it, or anything. Just that Sarah joins the line with her girls and Rachel’s already at the table, back to the doors, on the last day they’ll be doing this.

“Christ,” she mutters to herself, at the wave of emotion merely thinking _the last day_ brings her.

And it isn’t, technically. There will still be breakfast tomorrow before the parents arrive, but everyone will have their luggage waiting in the parking lot. Some parents will come early and kids will go before the meal’s over. Sarah remembers it from last year, in pieces, busy holding her heart together and trying not to let parents slip off without signing out. Even before the meal began camp was already over.

She hurries to fix her face with a neutral expression as Evie comes bumbling over to the line, if only for the obvious tear stains on Evie’s cheeks (and not wanting to deal with her if she starts crying again).

“Hey, Sarah,” Evie says, pressing her belly into the metal of the line handrail. She has jam on her face, too. Red. Because of course it would be.

“What’s up?” Sarah offers.

No one at the table seems concerned that Evie’s here, hanging out with the line, instead of eating the rest of what looks to be her meal on the only unmanned tray. She’s ten, so it checks out. But she’s also almost always attached to Rachel during meals and Sarah isn’t quite sure how to politely ask what the fuck she’s doing here.

Thankfully, Quinn does it for her. With slightly more appropriate language.

“Oh,” Evie replies, as if just now remembering. “I’m supposed to come get you. Sarah. Not you, Quinn. Rachel got you breakfast so you could skip the line.”

She says it with the most delightfully oblivious face, which doesn’t offset the expression Quinn gives in response. It’s an eyebrow raise that would make Rachel proud – and Sarah pretends not to notice, not so much in the spirit of keeping things under wraps, but because it only amplifies Quinn’s expression to receive absolutely nothing from Sarah.

“How considerate,” Sarah comments, ducking under the railing to follow Evie back to the table. (She has to hide her snicker with a forced cough as she looks back to see half her kids staring at her in suspicion or bewilderment.)

“I’m afraid it’s fairly cold, at this point,” Rachel says when Sarah sits down with her.

Sarah shakes her head, grinning, accepting the tray Rachel slides over. “Seriously, you’re the most considerate person I know.”

Rachel ducks her chin a little, shoulders rising, a softness in her cheeks that takes Sarah’s breath away, then her fingers come up to brush everything off. _No big deal. I’d do it for anyone._ Sarah only has to catch Marlow’s eye to know not a single person at this table believes that bullshit.

They’re all watching, too – like this is some small gift for making it to the final day, their counselors dropping the façade, being real and kind and sweet with each other as if it was in them all along. Maybe. Maybe it was. Sarah thinks back to that night on the porch steps: the first one. Rachel only waited up because she was worried.

_This darkness is my light._

She gave Sarah the very first key right then and there, even before she needed to.

“So,” Rachel says, watching Sarah’s hands and the bowl of cut-up fruit. “I’m assuming they gave you your cards, then?”

Sarah stabs a chunk of pineapple and eats it before she replies. “They told you?”

Rachel has pretty much the same breakfast, as far as Sarah can see: fruit, tea, enough syrup on her plate to suggest waffles that on Sarah’s tray are cold.

“My girls did the same for me,” Rachel says. She glances behind her, where several of Sarah’s girls have finally exited the line and are coming over with trays. “They all thought it up together.”

“And you liked it, right?” Evie asks, looking at both Sarah and Rachel.

Rachel smiles.

“Had me blubbering like a baby,” Sarah admits, grinning, and Evie grins back.

Quinn squeezes in on Sarah’s other side, forcing her just a little closer to Rachel with the kind of nonchalant attitude that means it’s intentional. But she’s smiling, her elbow all in Sarah’s personal space. Across the table, Madeleine and Raya are smiling as well.

They’ve all fit themselves onto Rachel’s half of the table; all twenty kids, Sarah and Rachel, leaving a full half empty just so they can be together. Because this is it. They don’t have a single session with each other today, and the breaks are meant for packing. They’re just trying to soak up as much time together as they can manage.

Like a family.

Sarah holds her breath, wanting to pause it all as the conversations carry on without her. And for a moment she can. For a moment, they’re a tableau of faces she won’t know how to wake up without, shoulder to shoulder, sharing the food on their plates and the same mix of contented expressions. They’re a whole summer older. It’s a still frame Sarah won’t ever be able to forget.

Then she exhales and joins them.

 

* * *

 

It’s an entire day full of finals. The final tennis match, the final dip in the lake, the final (hopefully) fight between Quinn and Madeleine as no one wants to claim the pair of underwear left under a bunk. Sarah manages to get it together just enough so that she isn’t _outwardly_ sentimental by the time Madeleine’s hurling underwear at Quinn’s face, but it’s been tough. Even the slightest mention of a last so-and-so has Sarah talking down the prick from behind her eyes.

She was a bit better at it last summer, but last summer she was also quite eager to run away from yet another mess, only lamenting having to leave her two friends. And even then she spent the car ride back to the city pretending she wasn’t crying along to the Cure.

Half the kids are sniveling messes, anyway. Lunch takes place outside for the traditional closing picnic, and the grass is dotted with clumps of kids consoling each other over burgers and watermelon.

Sarah loses her own kids to the opportunity to sit with other cabins and the mission of acquiring emails and phone numbers to theoretically keep in touch, despite how well that’s worked out in previous years, but she doesn’t mind letting them go. Most of the counsellors have grouped together on a ratty blanket with a few of the clingier kids (Evie still has a hand touching Rachel) and Sarah’s happy to join them.

Because this is it, really. Their last chance to marvel at how much they did this summer, how many messes they cleaned up, how many laughs they incited, how many missing socks they miraculously found. After the kids go home it’ll just be the take-down – mopping floors and packing up storage closets, leaving it all ready for ten months of rest.

“We did it,” Paul calls out as Sarah takes a seat between Rachel and one of Alison’s kids. “Can you believe it?”

It’s less directed at her than the group as a whole, and Sarah’s headshake is echoed.

“Feels like we just got here,” she says, balancing her over-piled plate in her lap. The crowded blanket doesn’t offer much space, her knee just about jammed into a kid’s back, but it’s worth it to sit with Rachel.

“I did try to save you a seat,” Rachel murmurs as Paul agrees with Sarah’s statement. _Another year gone. Don’t know where the time goes._

Sarah smiles, at Rachel and then Evie who’s peering around Rachel’s other side. “Don’t worry about it. Would’ve been here sooner, but there was another Quinncident.”

“Ah,” Rachel responds, and chuckles, all too familiar.

“Pretty sure we’re gonna fill about half the lost-and-found this year, because _some people_ have no memory of what they brought with them,” Sarah laments, getting a laugh from Beth as well.

“That’s why everything’s supposed to be labeled with the camper’s name,” Alison says from where she’s sitting squashed between Beth and one of her kids, pointedly ignoring Paul on Beth’s other side.

Neither of them seem to really be paying him attention, despite, Sarah assumes, the couple’s intention to sit together. Beth isn’t even fully facing him – more staring out at a cluster of kids with a thing of bubbles. It’ll be a miracle if they’re still together by Christmas.

“I’m sure you’ve met some of the parents,” Rachel replies for Sarah, who tries to tear her eyes from Beth mindlessly stabbing at a fruit cup. “Half the tags weren’t even cut off before they went into suitcases.”

It’s a valid point, but Sarah still can’t help herself from saying, “Oh, you talking about your own stuff?”

It gets a cheeky jab in her side and Alison laughs, Beth as well a second later, at both Sarah’s comment and Rachel feigning her miffed response.

“At least none of my items came to camp with holes already in them,” Rachel fires back, before allowing her smile to break through.

Sarah takes a big bite of her burger because no one can argue with that.

She still has lettuce hanging out her mouth as Evie leans over Rachel’s lap to see the two of them, grinning even wider than Alison at the banter. “I’m so glad you guys are friends,” she says.

It’s quick, but Sarah catches the knowing look that passes over Beth’s face as she blatantly doesn’t turn her head in Alison’s direction. And Alison’s smiling as well, to her slice of watermelon, as if this has come up between them before. Fair enough, Sarah wants to say. It might as well be her turn to be discussed after all the whispers concerning the _close friendship_ of Beth and Alison. At least this one’s a little more warranted.

Rachel seems to be thinking the same thing, as Sarah catches her eye. Her eyebrows raise and Sarah shrugs, smiling back, letting the lightness bubble up in her chest.

So what.

So darn what.

“Yes,” Rachel says to Evie, ruffling her messy hair. “Our friendship is a gift to everyone, isn’t it.”

Evie grins again unaware and this time Beth makes eye contact with Sarah, just enough to offer acknowledgment.

 _You could too_ , Sarah doesn’t say. Paul’s behind Beth thumb-wrestling Tony, and the day’s too warm and sunny to cloud it with that. It isn’t Sarah’s business, anyway, no matter how entangled she might have become in the past. It’ll never be hers.

“ _Beth!_ ” Alison’s kid cries out a second later, jolting the whole lot of them.

Beth freezes with her fork midway to her mouth, and Alison whips around, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets as she does.

“That’s _kiwi!_ ” she exclaims as the kid says, “Stop eating!”

“Shit- god,” Beth reacts, taking in what’s on her fork, then drops it onto her paper plate. “That was a close one, thanks, Subira.”

“She’s allergic,” the kid says to Sarah and Rachel, who have similarly addled expressions.

“We had a cabin discussion after a near-miss with a nut a few weeks ago,” Alison explains, Beth nodding as she dissects the rest of her fruit cup. “Just to be sure no one ate what they shouldn’t.”

“Smart,” Sarah says, wondering if any of her own kids have allergies.

Surely she’d know by now. It’s in the papers they get at the start of the summer, but she can’t say she’s ever read past the list of names, counting on the kids’ narcissism to keep her informed of their likes and dislikes. 

“Remember that barbecue?” Beth asks Alison, a wry smile on her face as she reminisces.

“You could have _died_ , Elizabeth,” Alison retorts, “So I still don’t find it very funny.”

“I looked like a baboon,” Beth says with a snort.

Sarah’s only frame of reference is a particularly bad case of poison ivy Felix once managed to obtain, eyes nearly swollen shut, but she can’t quite picture it on Beth’s pretty face; not with the sharp smile Beth’s holding for Alison’s benefit only.

Alison rolls her eyes, light enough for Sarah to find a tightness uncurling between her shoulder blades. She sees it in Paul as well – the serenity as he glances over, catching the tender exchange.

This is the Beth he talked about, she can almost hear him saying. The one he fell in love with.

“I once had an allergic reaction to a fabric softener,” Rachel says, carrying the moment forward with an ease that makes Sarah’s heart flutter. “Hives _everywhere_.”

They all laugh, shifting into more of a circle while Alison’s kid shares an allergy story of her own and sets the conversational tone for their picnic lunch.

Sarah, still trying to imagine hives marring a single part of Rachel’s skin, lets her fingers drift up to Rachel’s cheek as Evie jumps in with her own food-related tale. It’s a soft brush, Sarah’s touch, just along the jawline, and Rachel’s fingers come to join her, pausing as Sarah does at her chin.

 _Everywhere_ , Sarah says with her eye contact, bringing a flush to Rachel’s cheeks.

The smile they share is theirs alone, but Sarah can sense it being observed, politely, by the rest of their company on the picnic blanket.

She thought she’d feel at least _some_ urge to hide, the first time they really let themselves be seen, but it doesn’t come. All she feels is contentment. And Rachel’s smile mirrors just that back at her.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Rachel says at the buses, unnervingly calm in the sea of chaos.

She smells like campfire, Sarah wants to tell her. She smells like the final night, still, in her sweatshirt in the morning chill, and her hair is a little askew and she’s breathtaking.

“So,” Sarah repeats with her hands in her pockets.

They should probably be helping kids drag their luggage to waiting cars or the open backs of the school buses, or at least pretend to be doing more than standing beside each other in a particularly gritty dust cloud.

But Sarah’s kids are all signed out. Emails have been exchanged and she has fourteen new pen pals (never mind that she’ll see some of them again next year, and they’ll be in _her_ group). She got the cabin mostly swept while they all latched onto each other in this hours-long farewell and once the last car disappears over the hill she has another couple exciting hours of cleaning ahead of her.

She wants to stand still. She just wants to stand here with Rachel because right now she still can.

“So,” Rachel reiterates, and Sarah realizes she’s staring at her hands in her pockets.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Did you- here?”

There’s almost as many crying kids as last night around the campfire, this time with parents trying to corral them into idling cars without taking any of the lingering bugs with them. For whatever reason the gnats have decided to swarm _right here_ , as if they too are saying goodbye. Good riddance, more likely.

But it isn’t the gnats that have Sarah’s stomach flipping.

She can spot about six of their mutual kids just without searching and there are enough pointing fingers for her to know they’re being observed. (Quinn, appropriately, points with her dad’s car keys, likely threatening to have her counselor drive her home instead with her dad’s pained grimace.)

“I mean-” Rachel starts, and there’s a little tragic laugh as her shoulders go up, and she says all that she has to in that sad hiccupping sound.

This is their last chance. This is the summer ending, and she wants it to end while holding Sarah’s hand.

“Okay,” Sarah says just as Rachel’s expression seems to have given up. Her hand extends, and Rachel’s lips pull into a helplessly giddy shape. “Fuck it. They all know.”

Sure enough, there’s a whoop as soon as Rachel takes Sarah’s hand, swinging it between them like a schoolgirl. Madeleine.

Sarah grins.

“’Bout time,” Raya calls out, startling her poor grandmother who’s waiting in the front seat of their open car. Madeleine seems to be what’s holding them up, as well, scribbling something on a pad of paper against Raya’s back.

“God,” Sarah mutters, smiling, turning to bury her embarrassment in Rachel’s shoulder.

“Well they can’t say we didn’t make their summer entertaining,” Rachel says, catching Sarah’s attempted retreat with a little nudge.

Madeleine finally finishes and comes bounding over with a grin as wide as the sun, nearly skidding to a stop just in front of them. (More dust – their very own shower.) “Can I take a picture?” she asks. “I have my mom’s phone.”

She holds up the iPhone like it’s a trophy and there’s a glint in her eye that almost betrays her seemingly innocent delight.

“Why?” Sarah pries as Rachel says, “Sure, why not.”

Rachel must feel the death-squeeze Sarah gives her but she and Madeleine choose to ignore her completely.

“All right, get a little closer! Smile!” Madeleine commands. She steps back to get a full shot, likely haloing them in dust and gnats caught in the apologetic sunlight.

Rachel loops her arm around Sarah’s waist, squeezing just enough to read possessive as the rest of her is a soft, warm presence melting into Sarah’s side, bringing out a smile of Sarah’s that she _knows_ reveals far too much to be on Madeleine’s mother’s phone.

“I’ll send it to you, okay?” Madeleine says, as her face appears again from behind the phone. She has a funny smile on, confirming Sarah’s fear. “You guys look so… sweet!”

“Oh dear, we can’t have anyone thinking we aren’t evil witches,” Rachel teases, releasing Sarah so far as capturing her hand again. She and Madeleine share a snicker and Madeleine crosses her heart.

“Only for us graduates, I promise,” she replies, and glances at the photo again. “The next kids have to earn this.”

Rachel says _good_ and apparently anticipates the hug Madeleine launches at them, her grip on Sarah’s hand the only thing that keeps Sarah from falling flat on her ass in the dirt. The thought of that harsh landing brings her back to the water fight – to Rachel’s Super Soaker, to Sarah shoving her into the mud, to the horrendously lonely days that followed it. She was so convinced that was the end.

“Listen,” Rachel says, as Madeleine’s mom finally calls for her return.

Madeleine prances back through a maze of suitcases and campers and rogue younger siblings, and Sarah and Rachel both watch her capture her little brother in a hug that lifts him off his feet. He’ll be with Delphine next summer. And Madeleine will be on the other side of the Mountains, growing older every day.

“I know it will all change once we’re back in the city,” Rachel goes on, keeping her gaze fixed on Madeleine’s family.

There should be a grandfather with them, Sarah remembers. Madeleine’s going home to uncertainty, too, and she hasn’t stopped smiling.

“Hopefully not all of it,” Sarah murmurs, and jostles their clutched hands.

“Well,” Rachel says, and she takes a steadying breath. “That’s what I wanted to… I wanted to propose something. That we… can consider. No pressure.”

Madeleine climbs into the back of the van and one by one her family disappears alongside her. Doors slide shut. The engine starts. There are so many engines starting, so many trunks closing, so many waving hands from car windows.

“Fine, Rachel, I’ll get a matching tattoo with you,” Sarah kids, giving Rachel pause before she catches on.

There’s a flicker of exasperation that could easily lead to an Alison-style huff of a response but Rachel lets it dissolve into the gritty air around them and counters with a smart, “only if it’s appropriately vulgar.”

Sarah laughs.

“But seriously,” Rachel says, smiling.

“Seriously,” Sarah responds.

Rachel recenters herself with a little shimmy and this time she’s able to face Sarah head-on. “I know we’re taking it slow, but,” she says, and her smile grows as Sarah can’t stop a smile of her own from breaking out. “It _will_ be slower in the city, just by its nature, us returning home, and I wanted to propose an official… title. For this. Just for…”

“Rachel,” Sarah interrupts, grinning like a fool. “Are you asking to be my girlfriend?”

Impressively, Rachel manages to offset her dismantled expression with very dignified posture as she straightens up. “I believe I was asking you to be mine,” she asserts.

It’s Sarah’s turn to try to regain her cool, and she can’t even do half as well as Rachel with the strangled laugh that comes out.

“Well, now that Madeleine has that picture…”

“If you don’t say yes I’ll retract my proposal,” Rachel threatens.

Sarah says yes. Of course.

Two months ago she was standing in this exact spot eager to bury her fear in throwing herself into her job, as if it was possible to evade her mistakes by pretending they didn’t exist. She had butterflies then for different reasons. No one’s hand to steady her.

The buses finally begin to take off over the hill in a slow procession, leaving far too big an absence in their wake for anyone to pretend they can continue to prolong this ending. Sarah runs her thumb along Rachel’s knuckle; her girlfriend gives a gentle squeeze in response. The summer’s over, but now everything else can come next.

 

 


End file.
